


J LIBRARY OF CONGRESS.? 

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t ' ^/ve/£ QsS 



j UNITED STATES OF AMERICA. | 



THEOPNEUSTON 



SELECT SCRIPTURES CONSIDERED 



THEOPNEUSTON 



SELECT SCRIPTURES CONSIDERED 



SAMUEL HANSON COX, D. D. 

Pastor of the First Presbyterian church, Brooklyn, N. Y. 



ADAPTED TO BE USEFUL TO BIBLE CLASSES, SABBATH 
SCHOOL TEACHERS, AND OTHER CAREFUL 
READERS OF THE WORD J 




Understandest thou what thou readest ? 

And he said, How can I, except some man should guide me ? 



NEW-YORK 

PUBLISHED BY DAYTON& NEWMAN, 

1 99 BROADWAY 
1842 



***% 



-p?- t 



Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1842, by 

DAYTON & NEWMAN, 

in the Cierk's Office of the District Court of the United States, for 
the Southern District of New York. 



B. \V. UENKDICT, P1UNT. 



CONTENTS 



PAGE. 

Inscription, 7 

Introductory observations, ... 35 

SELECTION I. 
By and by, 63 

SELECTION II. 
The ax laid at the root, 9& 

SELECTION III. 
The single eye, . . . ' . . 85 

SELECTION IV. 
Charity, 87 

SELECTION V. 
The gospel hid, 105 

SELECTION VI. 
Taking them with guile, . . . .115 

SELECTION VII. 
What Jesus says is true, . . . 127 

SELECTION VIII. 
Purging all meats, 131 

SELECTION IX. 
Agonize to enter at the strait gate, . 137 



TO THE 

HON. JOSEPH COURTEN HORNBLOWER, LL.D. 

CHIEF JUSTICE OF THE STATE OF NEW- JERSEY, AND 

RULING ELDER IN THE FIRST PRESBYTERIAN 

CHURCH, NEWARK, N. J. 



Honored and dear Sir — You will brook 
the liberty here taken with your name, I 
think, in honor properly less of a friendship 
now of more than thirty years standing — 
from my first acquaintance with you and 
respect for you, than of a spiritual relation, 
that crowns all others, which is exactly — as 
I count — thirty years old the present autumn ; 
especially when the motive is known and ap- 
preciated, by which I am influenced, in the 
inscription of this little volume to my coun- 
trymen, through you, their proper and honored 
representative. 

You shall not be offended or alienated, be 
sure of it, by any thing like flattery, or the 



DEDICATION 



remotest approach to that style of adulation, 
that is less at home in our country, it may be, 
than in the older hemisphere ; and that is not 
more revolting to the Christian, than obnox- 
ious to correct taste, ordinarily censurable on 
the score of sincerity, incongruous to the sim- 
plicity of a republican, frequently verging from 
the affected sublime to the purely ridiculous, 
and really impeachable on the sober ground 
of courteous respect ; since it is a specimen of 
grossness and bad manners, to tell a person 
directly and at large all the good or fine 
things, even if they are true, which might be 
said, and are possibly well said, by his friends, 
in his favor. 

If there be any virtue, and if there be any 
praise, however, in rightly estimating those 
things of God, which it is our present de- 
sign to unfold, and w T hich are supremely ex- 
cellent, it is not amiss that this appeal is made 
to one whose probity and intelligence, whose 
impartial love of the truth and catholic Chris- 
tian piety, are the mature and the appropri- 
ate qualifications which an author might 
select or prefer, in making that appeal, in 
behalf of his work, where the matter and the 



INSCRIPTION 



motive, as distinguished from the manner and 
the style, are the whole of its pretension to 
public countenance and support. 

As to its name or title, since a name is that 
by which any person or thing is known, it 
ought to be designating, distinctive, peculiar. 
All scripture is given by inspiration of God ; 
a proposition among the most signal and mo- 
mentous ever couched in human language ! 
Eight words express it in the translation, 
three in the original ; and the last word there 
we have appropriated — theopneuston — in 
the neuter form, as the name of our little 
volume. The chief reason is — that it pro- 
poses to be conversant with divine inspira- 
tion, as the soul of its body and the vitality 
of its being ; while it answers all the ends 
of a name and is perhaps wholly unappropri- 
ated. The theopneusty that has lately ap- 
peared, from an author in Geneva and a 
translator in Boston, both known and loved 
by the present writer, is not precisely the 
same word ; while the work it entitles, how- 
ever allied it may be and however superior, 
is widely dissimilar; and our name was 
adopted and fixed before we heard of the 
2 



10 INSCRIPTION 

other, its etymological twin-brother or rather 
identity. But as it is a foreigner and one of 
the ancients, it is illustrated also in the title ; 
as, 

THEOPNEUSTON, 

OR 

SELECT SCRIPTURES CONSIDERED. 

The motto needs no explanation. Its histo- 
ry is found in Acts, 8 : 30, 31, and from verse 
26 to 40. And should this publication find 
favor with general readers, and the writer's 
life be spared, he hopes to work in the same 
vocation more profitably hereafter ; since 
there is almost no end to important passages, 
some of them grandly important and full of 
interest, to be selected and examined, in a 
similar way and given to the reading com- 
munity. 

As a mode of communicating religious in- 
struction to the public, it is rather peculiar, if 
not original or new. Sermons are little read, 
and booksellers consider them as not market- 
able. A worldling thinks of going to sleep 
as soon as he hears the word — sermon. Com- 
mentaries are considered voluminous, pletho- 
ric, and fitter for students than general read- 



INSCRIPTION i 1 

ers. And didactic discussions, not to say 
those of a polemical tendency, are little ap- 
preciated, even where they are at all endured: 
while the light trash of the ephemeral press, 
its romance, its folly, its falsehood, its attrac- 
tion, and its poison, seem to require many an 
effort to counteract its influence. Nor will it 
answer to be supine and do nothing, because 
we can neither do all things, nor such things 
as we cannot but desire, as less below our own 
standard of achievement. We can make some 
attempt. No .effort was ever lost, said 
Milton ; and it took Milton to say such a 
thing. Yes! in working for Christ, every 
stroke is victory, every battle triumph. 

It has been our aim to be various and en- 
tertaining, as well as faithful and useful ; to 
make something rather readable, rather 
American, as well as instructive, edifying, 
Christian. 

Ornne tulit punctuui qui iniscuit utile dulci, 
said Horace, two thousands years ago ; 

He every point achieves, who with the sweet 
Mingles the useful, making both complete. 

This however, is an excellence which very 



12 INSCRIPTION 

few ever exemplify ; and we can be pardon- 
ed for aiming so high, much more easily than 
for coming so far short of the mark. There 
is nothing like the Holy Scriptures for study, 
for profit, for excellence, and for delight. 

The \york is adapted, less in form, than in 
substance, to be useful to Bible Classes, Sab- 
bath School Teachers, and other careful read- 
ers of the word of God ? If it inspires the 
habit of thinking, as well as reading, and 
makes the latter at all subservient to the 
former, in the study of the Scriptures, our ef- 
fort will not be lost. How important is it to 
learn to think ! How few ever make the at- 
tainment ! How paltry is reading without 
thinking ! It seems necessary to think, if it 
is to love ; since it were strange indeed, if we 
love Christ, and yet grudge to think of him. 
What some professors of Christianity lose, by 
not habituating this duty, it is impossible for 
us fully to estimate. Even if they lose not 
their souls, yet is their damage great and 
wasting. They lose light, comfort, strength, 
joy, stability, growth, symmetry of character, 
usefulness, and ripeness for heaven. And 
Christ loses by them that declarative glory to 



INSCRIPTION 13 

which he has so good and so imperative a 
claim. 

The selections, II. VI. IX. are specially 
important as corrections of popular mistakes, 
in which many a theologian of eminence has 
ingloriously participated. If the publication 
shall have the effect, proximately or remotely, 
to diffuse a juster sense of the true and pro- 
per meaning of these shamefully abused scrip- 
tures ; if thus the public sentiment of Chris- 
tians may be started in a right channel re- 
specting them ; and if the general habit may 
be at all assisted in this way of profitable and 
correct thinking, and even of studying into 
the native sense of scripture ; it will have ac- 
complished something desirable ; it will have 
done service to the cause supreme of God and 
man ; it will have fulfilled — we are sure — a 
useful, though humble, mission in the world. 
If we all knew the golden profits of mining 
among these original stratifications of truth, 
these primitive treasures of God, we should 
have less time and temper for wrangling the- 
ologically, and we should practically despise 
the prolific isms of human wisdom and ' 
audacity. 



14« INSCRIPTION 

We might well say to the irreligious, 
with Dr. Young, 

Retire and read thy Bible to be gay, 
There truths abound of sovereign aid to peace. 
Ah ! do not prize them less because inspired, 
As thou and thine are fond and proud to do. 
If not inspired, that pondrous page had stood 

Time's treasure and the wonder of the wise. 

****** 

A page where triumphs immortality, 
Which not the whole creation could produce ; 
Which not the conflagration shall destroy. 
In nature's ruins not one letter lost. 

'Tis printed in the mind of God forever. 

****** 

'Tis immortality unriddles man. 
'Tis immorality illustrates God. 

'Tis immortality illumines all. 

****** 

'Tis this makes joy a duty to the wise, 

'Tis this makes Christian triumph a command, 

'Tis impious in a good man to be sad ! 

The Holy Scriptures are able to make thee 
wise unto salvation, through faith which is 
in Christ Jesus. 2 Tim. 3 : 15. 

As to that imperial, pragmatical, inexora- 
ble class of readers called critics, I may say in 
truth that I have had little respect for them or 
care about them, in writing these sheets. 



INSCRIPTION 15 

They will very probably discover, by their 
sagacity, that the style is quite ' peculiar/ and 
the whole thing remarkably ' characteristic ;' 
and then they may — not graciously, since it 
is all justice, not grace, that makes their pro- 
fessional element, but — gracefully, perchance, 
oblige the public, by communicating to the 
less gifted, ne sons absolvatur, the remarkable 
discovery. Some of them can easily tear to 
pieces what others have made ; since it is so 
much easier to pull down than to build, to 
censure than perform : even as a great man 
remarks, that ' a savage can destroy a palace, 
who could not construct a hovel.' But to 
others, I cast myself on their clemency and 
even their commiseration. Did they know the 
multitude of cares and distractions, through 
which I have threaded my way as in a wil- 
dering labyrinth ; often an inch at a time, 
and with ceaseless and immitigable interrup- 
tions, breaking the threads of thought and 
the clews of guidance ; knew they the head- 
aches, or, the heart-aches, or the manifold 
discouragements and trials, as well as won- 
derful mercies, through which, jfam£, yd pur- 
suing, I have finished it in a sort at last j and 



16 INSCRIPTION 

understood they the great difference, in my 
own mind, between the matter or the sub- 
stance, and the manner or the style and the 
trappings of its appearance ; and felt they 
how much and humbly I would intreat them, 
to give my Bibliaridion,* needing it so much, 
a little of that mercy which they so piously 
and copiously award to the style and the 
manner of the Bible of God itself: perhaps 
their opportune clemency would so qualify 
their minds for the perusal, as to insure much 
more profit, and even pleasure, from the task, 
than could in any other way accrue. I wish 
its style were incomparably better ; but such 
as it is — may the wise make the best of it! 

u Let those teach others who themselves excel, 
And censure freely who have written well. 55 

Besides, every man, amid gifts differing, 

seems to have his own proper gift of God for 

edification. He must then be himself, do as 

well as he can, and rejoice in all those who 

can do better. I only add in this connection, 

that the service here attempted is of very 

great weight and importance to the churches. 

To understand the Scriptures will unite us all, 

* Little Book. 



INSCRIPTION 17 

or nothing ever will. God will give us no 
new revelation; nor will he change his old 
one, till the end of time or the end of eterni- 
ty. The Bible now contains, in its perfect 
canon, all the light that will ever be given 
to the world. No doubt it will be better un- 
derstood, more diffused, and more enjoyed, es- 
pecially as hermeneutical science advances, 
as times and seasons roll, and as providence 
fulfils prophecy. But all is only the expan- 
sion, the development, and the illustration, of 
what we have already in the wonderful and 
blessed Bible. Hence every sober and honest 
attempt to show its pure meaning, and to 
teach men so, deserves favor from the wise. 
Its whole contents are one ; one tree, with a 
thousand branches ; one body, with many 
parts, members, and organs ; one complicate 
but perfectly harmonious system, evincing 
the unity of the Spirit. It is called by way 
of justest eminence, the Book, the Bible. 
Thus, though it contains sixty -six books, thir- 
ty-nine of the Old and twenty-seven of the 
New Testament ; though written and fur- 
nished by between forty and fifty inspired 
men, the amanuenses of the Holy Ghost ; 



IS INSCRIPTION 

and though its writers lived through a space 
of more than one thousand five hundred years, 
and inhabited different countries, as Egypt, 
Arabia, Palestine, Asia Minor, and other 
parts of the Great Roman Empire, at their 
times of writing ; yet are they all servants 
of one master, all tributary to one cause, all 
have one theme, all have one Inspirer, one 
object, one design, one hope, one reward, one 
home ! 

It is my honest opinion, sir, that, for the rea- 
sons above stated, should the substance of this 
publication be at all useful, in its desired sub- 
serviency to the elucidation of the truth of 
God, as revealed to men in the Holy Scrip- 
tures, it will receive your cordial approbation, 
mingled with a kind and a generous estimate 
of its imperfections ; and also that, should it 
be so fortunate as to conciliate your own, it 
may be cheered on its way, probably, by the 
smiles, if not the plaudits, of others. 

No more of that. But before closing this 
address to yourself, I beg leave to seize an 
opportunity, long desired, and not soon found 
again were this left to pass unimproved, of 
giving to the world in a more authentic form, 



INSCRIPTION 19 

an anecdote of some importance — as late 
events have shown — which has already ap- 
peared with good results, though defectively 
prepared and heralded, before the public. 
And I know of few others, dear sir, to whom, 
on the score of just and liberal appreciation, 
I could with equal propriety address it ; or 
who, in reference to its received authenticity 
or its due circulation and influence, might 
relatively better vouch to the public for its 
validity, its sound historical truth. 

Mankind at large, by a law of their being 
and their social relations, are affected with 
the power of examples, as well as of names, 
precedents, and usages, to an extent not often 
adequately computed by divines or philoso- 
phers. " Names are things," said a practi- 
cally wise man. A great poet has said in- 
deed, that 

A rose by any other name would smell as sweet : 

but, for one, I question it. Our associations 
with the name, rose, are delightful. They 
are fragrant and odoriferous in our raptured 
imaginations, when the mere word is men- 
tioned in English or Latin, and before that 



20 INSCRIPTION 

glory of the flower-garden, white, red, or 
various, is substantially presented to regale 
the senses with its delicate beauty and its 
richly effluent perfume. Hence a great and 
loved example is credited in advance for 
every associated virtue. We readily believe 
what is good of his name or history, and we 
love goodness the more for every illustration 
it receives from him. On the other hand, if 
impiety is ascertained of such a personage, 
it either specially shocks us, or — we " first 
endure, then pity, then embrace " it, for his 
sake. Such an example can commend Chris- 
tianity, if its agent were a Christian ; and he 
can perhaps more promote infidelity, if he 
were ascertained or believed to be an infidel. 
Great are the obligations of distinguished 
men to be good, and to exemplify goodness 
before others ! 

How pre-eminently do these principles ap- 
ply to the name of Washington ! His un- 
paralleled career of honor and applause, had 
he been like our third President, proh ! dede- 
cuspatrice!* an infidel, would have entailed 
on this nation and all coming ages, a propor- 
* Alas ! for the glory of the country ! 



INSCRIPTION '21 

tionate moral curse, more pestiferous than 
his services were splendid and his actions 
useful ; gigantic as his fame, and indelible as 
the history of his public achievements. No 
other man could have injured us in that way 
so much, or so irreparably. He was a man 
of his own class, and infidels have been anx- 
ious to claim him as their own. But they 
have signally failed in this, as their interests 
and their efforts will soon be all and eternally 
bankrupt together. They now despair of the 
attempt. To charge Washington with infideli- 
ty is an affront to the truth of history, and 
the nation will not endure it. It is a kind 
of impiety and treason, as well as ingrati- 
tude, which all men instinctively resent and 
deny. This they have often done, and on 
one modern occasion, it seems, they did, even 
in a theatre, when an impudent foreigner and 
atheist ventured to claim him ; denouncing 
the outrage with one prolonged and unani- 
mous outburst of merited indignation. And 
any fact which illustrates his piety, or in any 
way redeems his fame from the calumny, is wel- 
comed by the public sentiment of the country as 
a part of the common treasure of mankind. 



22 



INSCRIPTION 



The truth is, Washington was not only a 
believer in the religion of the Lord Jesus 
Christ, but a professor of the faith and a com- 
municant in the church of God. This fact 
will have its weight on the right side of the 
great argument and be quoted with increas- 
ing cogency by unborn generations. That it 
is a fact is well attested by many authentic 
traditionary fragments ; but these, for some 
reason, have been omitted or slighted too 
generally in all the graver compilations of 
his biography.* But they must sleep in for- 
getfulness no longer. We owe it to our na- 
tion and to mankind, we owe it to the purity 
and the justice of his own unequaled fame, to 
record these facts, that exhibit the graver ex- 
cellences of his character, and to emblazon 
them, decus et tutamen, in alto-relievo, on the 
most enduring monuments of our country's 
greatness. 

Called a few years since, by the late Dr. 
Hosack, when preparing his valuable memoir 
of Clinton, to contribute a paper for his work, 
in reference to the position and influence of 

* The late work of Dr. Sparks, which I have since 
read, is a happy exception. 



INSCRIPTION 23 

that distinguished patriot as President of the 
Presbyterian Education Society, I complied ; 
and in its performance, influenced by senti- 
ments such as I have endeavored above to 
portray, I found place for the anecdote, to 
which I have in all this a current allusion, 
and which will be considered interesting even 
by the general reader. Since it has appear- 
ed, it has been quoted, used, rehearsed by 
many, valued by the good, and gratuitously 
questioned, I find, by some of another descrip- 
tion. I have subsequently regretted several 
things concerning it, such as the following : 

1. That I did not assign to it a more con- 
spicuous and honorable place, than that of a 
note, or suffix merely, to the text of the com- 
munication ; which it would have graced, 
and adorned, had it been therein incorporat- 
ed ; as, with little care or address, it might 
easily and well have been. I regretted too 

2. That I had not given my authority for the 
narrative ; since this was requisite to stamp 
its credibility, as a fact, in the enlightened 
conviction of all readers. This I fully pur- 
posed to do, in some supplemental way ; espe- 
cially by writing to my venerable inform- 



24* INSCRIPTION 

ant, and procuring from his own hand a full 
and minute account of the matter, which, 
when published, would put the question be- 
yond all doubt, and establish the fact for ever. 
And here my regret rises to lamentation ; 
since : -3. by delay, unintentional but steal- 
thy in its progress, and at the very time when 
I was about to perform what I had so impro- 
perly delayed, I was precluded by the death of 
the late Reverend Asa Hillyer, D. D. of 
Orange, N. J. It was from the lips of this 
excellent person, with whom you, dear sir, 
w r ere, as well as myself, long and well ac- 
quainted, that I received the narrative ; as he 
received it, he said, from the lips of the worthy 
minister of Christ, w T ho officiated on the oc- 
casion, the Reverend Timothy Johns, D. D. 
of Morristown, New Jersey. 

Dr. Hillyer related the fact in a very in- 
teresting and impressive manner, and to a 
number of clergymen and others, as we were 
dining together in the city of New York, at 
the hospitable board of Anson G. Phelps, 
Esq. on the day of the anniversary of the 
American Bible Society, in May, of the year 
(I think) 1827. Dr. Hillyer was well ac- 



INSCRIPTION 25 

quainted with Dr. Johns, as his next neigh- 
bor ; their parishes being conterminous and 
their intimacy great. These facts considered 
will, I think, establish the anecdote as au- 
thentic history ; although I scarcely the less 
lament that the public are not assured of it, 
in a written form from the pen of Dr. Hillyer 
himself. 

But as the fact is worth corroborating, I 
wrote to my friend, John B. Johns, M. D. of 
Morristown, grandson of the Rev. Dr. Johns ; 
and have from him received the most satisfac- 
tory attestations. He says, u I believe there is 
no doubt of the truth of the fact. But there is 
now no living evidence. I remember to have 
heard Mr. William Johns, the son of the said 
Reverend clergyman, say, ' I heard General 
Washington make the request, and inquire 
as to the propriety of his taking the sacra- 
ment, and I saw him take it.' The widow of 
Mr. William Johns informed me, within a few 
days, that she heard her husband say, he saw 
him take the sacrament, at the time to which 
you refer." 

This must have occurred " during the win- 
's* 



26 INSCRIPTION 

ter of 1779-80, while the army was in win- 
ter-quarters in Morristown." 

" While on the subject, it may be interest- 
ing to you for me to state that a lady, by the 
name of Mrs. Child * widow of Francis Child, 
Esq. who printed the first daily paper in the 
city of New York, very respectable and well 
known by many of the old and influential 
citizens of New York, such as Chancellor 
Kent, Robert Lenox, Esq. and others, told 
me that she saw General Washington take 
the sacrament in Trinity Church, and that 
she sat in the next pew behind him at the 
time ; which must have been when Washing- 
ton resided in the city of New York, as Presi- 
dent of the United States." 

In a subsequent letter, Dr. Johns, referring 
to the note in Hosack's Memoir of Clinton, 
says, " I have read it to the widow of the late 
Mr. William Johns, and she says/ it is as per- 
fect as she can make it, and is correct, as far as 
she can recollect of her husband's conversa- 
tion.' 

" One fact only she added ; which was that 

* Personally and well known to myself also, as pas- 
tor of her daughters. — S. H. C. 



INSCRIPTION 27 

the General requested Dr. Johns to have a 
longer intermission between his morning and 
afternoon services, that his officers might at- 
tend, since the second service interfered with 
their dinner hour. So it was changed, and 
the officers attended both services." 

Dr. Johns began his ministry at Morris- 
tow^, Aug. 13, 1742. He was ordained and 
installed their pastor, Feb. 6, 1743, and en- 
tered into rest, in September, 1794 ; having 
served his people in the gospel more than 
half a century. His successors were, the 
Rev. James Richards, D. D. the Rev. Samuel 
Fisher, D. D. the Rev, William A. Mc 
Dowell, D. D. and the Rev. Albert Barnes, 
D. D. all living ; not to mention the present 
incumbents of two churches in that beauti- 
ful and favored town. 

I now transcribe the note to which I have 
so frequently referred. It occurs on page 
183 of the Memoir of Clinton, under date of 
March 20, 1828 ; in the same words, only that 
the name of Dr. Johns is spelt there incorrectly. 

" I have the following anecdote from un- 
questionable authority. It has never, I think, 
been given to the public ; but I received it 



28 INSCRIPTION 

from the venerable clergyman, (the Rev. Dr. 
Hillyer,) who had it from the lips of the Rev. 
Dr. Johns himself. 

" While the American army, under the 
command of Washington, lay encamped in 
the environs of Morristown, New Jersey, it 
occurred that the service of the communion, 
then observed semi-annually only, was to be 
administered in the Presbyterian church of 
that village. In a morning of the previous 
week, the General, after his accustomed in- 
spection of the camp, visited the house of the 
Rev. Dr. Johns, then pastor of that church, 
and after the usual preliminaries, thus accost- 
ed him ; ' Doctor, I understand that the Lord's 
Supper is to be celebrated with you next 
Sunday. I would learn if it accords with the 
canons of your church to admit communi- 
cants of another denomination V The doc- 
tor rejoined, ' most certainly ; ours is not the 
Presbyterian table, General, but the Lord's 
table ; and we hence give the Lord's invita- 
tion to all his followers, of whatever name.' 
The General replied/ I am glad of it; that is 
as it ought to be : but as I was not quite sure 
of the fact, I thought I would ascertain it from 



INSCRIPTION 29 

yourself, as I propose to join with you on that 
occasion. Though a member of the Church 
of England, I have no exclusive partialities.' 

The Doctor re-assured him of a cordial 
welcome, and the General was found seated 
with the communicants the next Sabbath." 

As a jurist and an experienced judge of 
evidence, I now appeal to you, dear sir, both 
for the competency and the credibility of this 
proof of the facts alleged. They are neither 
forgeries, nor fictions, nor fancies, but verita- 
ble facts. And they prove that Washington 
was a Christian — at least so far as a sound 
profession of the faith of the Redeemer must 
be taken by us, who cannot search the heart, 
as evidence of the reality. And this fact is 
worth knowing, worth verifying, worth com- 
memorating, worth publishing ! There are 
thousands and millions in the world, and in 
either hemisphere, whom that announcement 
would more affect, in favor of the truth, than 
a hundred better arguments. Christianity is 
the only religion of rational evidence in the 
world. Its rational evidence, direct and indi- 
rect, interna], external, and collateral, is a 
pile magnificent, homogeneous, and impreg- 



30 INSCRIPTION 

nable. Age only improves it. Time and 
history are its tributaries. While, among 
others, this — its adaptation to convince the 
greatest minds, and to subdue the proudest, 
by means so legitimate and so rational as an 
intelligent and candid acquaintance with its 
nature, with all its remedies for all our mala- 
dies, its provisions for our moral ruin, and its 
blood-bought mercies for our guilt ; this 
adaptation is wonderful and overwhelming : 
and every example of its grand effect, espe- 
cially every eminent example, is demonstra- 
tive of its divinity and monumental of its 
truth. Hence let us bless God that we may 
add the name of Washington to a galaxy of 
luminaries so illustrious ! It cancels the 
splendor of all the infidels that ever lived. 
Let us contemplate its pure and placid 
dignity. 

WASHINGTON 

THE HERO, THE SAGE, THE AVOWED DISCIPLE. 
Clarum et venerabile nomen 

Illustrious name ! and venerable more 
Than myriads whom the vulgar great adore. 
'Tis what the Father of his Country was 
In act and purpose, claims onr just applause. 



INSCRIPTION 31 

For noble deeds by heaven in mercy sent j 
Seen less in words than conduct and intent, 
His life for liberty and man was spent : 
€ His name alone shall be his monument. 3 

Hence, ye profane ! ye infidels, give way ; 
Here pours the truth its own celestial day. 
Let all the nation learn, like him, t'obey, 
Believe and worship, hope in God, and pray ! 

These sainted acts on principle were done ; 
In them the Christian and the Hero shone. 
Then let his country all his virtues own ; 
But most the causes of each patriot one. 

Deep sources of his excellent renown ; 
Let the whole world aspire to such a crown, 
Beyond Time's chances, near th 5 eternal throne. 
And copy grace and truth in Washington. 

But I must conclude. What I have now 
done will not, I trust, grieve me on a death- 
bed ; and if the cause of causes should in 
any wise receive benefit, glory to God alone. 
If in this address, such materials may seem to 
any person to be out of place or incongruous, 
I shall care little to refute the sentiment. 
Out of season duties have place, however, in 
the ministerial commission, as well as in sea- 
son ones ; and some will think, with the 
writer, that these facts had better be given to 



32 INSCRIPTION 

the public, and duly vouched, even if all that 
is stately, courtly, and tasteful, in their style 
of introduction, should not be found emi- 
t nently to grace their actual appearance- Nor 
am I certain, honored sir, that they are not 
just in place, on the whole, in this address. 
You know the parties, the places, and the 
particulars, many of them involved in the 
narrative ; to say nothing of your official 
eminence, as the Chief Justiciary of your na- 
tive state, which implies all the qualifications 
desired for their due and signal authentica- 
tion to the world. 

Christianity indeed, like the sun in the 
centre of dependent orbs, gives radiance to 
all belonging to the system, but derives it 
from God alone. To the religion of the Son 
of God, how profoundly are we all indebted ! 
and what can we impart of lustre or renown, 
that we have not more received from it ? 
No flesh shall glory before God — neither 
Washington nor Paul. It is the character 
of the Christian that he loves to be humble — 
otherwise, he could never be a worshipper, 
never a disciple. His humility consists in 
thinking the truth about himself; his piety 



INSCRIPTION 33 

in thinking, and his praise in speaking, the 
truth about God. To be a Christian, is the 
wealth and the wisdom of existence. If we 
are such, my honored senior brother in Christ, 
let us prepare especially for our grand and 
bright inheritance. For all are yours, and 
ye are Christ's, and Christ is God's. 

With sentiments of sincere esteem and fra- 
ternal affection in Christ Jesus, I remain, 
dear sir, your friend and servant, 

SAMUEL HANSON COX. 

Brooklyn, N. F. September 1, 1842. 



INTRODUCTORY OBSERVATIONS 



There are two classes of persons in the 
respectable reading community, who are rare- 
ly, if ever, benefited, by the reading of the 
Holy Scriptures. Who can compute the 
damage to their souls ! 

The first of these classes is composed of 
those, who, rarely, if ever, read the Holy 
Scriptures. They read other books multitudi- 
nous. Novels, romances, newspapers, and 
some periodicals of useful or ornamental liter- 
ature, they occasionally or constantly peruse. 
On their topics they converse. They see the 
great world through no other medium. Hence 
they never see the w T orld as it is, because they 
never see it in the light of heaven. Much 
less do they in any sense see the world to 
come. Thus they live in a real delusion, or 
a voluntary ignorance, of the greatest, the 



36 INTRODUCTORY OBSERVATIONS 

most interesting, and the most important 
things in the universe. What they know is 
trash, compared with what they neglect. 
Whether the Bible be a revelation from 
God — or not, — is a matter, into which they 
never had the virtue, or the sense, or the 
courage, seriously to inquire. Presently the 
dream vanishes. Death wakes them from the 
dotage of years. Prepared or unprepared, 
they die; and how many open their eyes on 
an undone eternity ! They know — too 
late ! since, if they die unbenefited by the 
Holy Scriptures, w T hat other knowledge of 
theirs, no matter how characterized or how ob- 
tained, ever makes them wise unto salvation, 
or passes current in heaven, instead of that, 
which they have always in their practice des- 
pised on earth. 2 Tim. 3 : 15 ; Luke, 16 : 31- 
Their other possessions, distinctions, and 
attainments, are no succedaneum for that Ao- 
liness, without which no man shall see the Lord. 
However they figured here, with whatever 
sublunary fame their actions were decorated, 
and whether their names were Croesus, Alex- 
ander, Hume, Gibbon, Napoleon, Byron, Sir 
Walter Scott, or Wellington, if they died 



INTRODUCTORY OBSERVATIONS 37 

without the knowledge and the love of God, 
their other things are all worse than worth- 
less, at his impartial tribunal, who accepteth 
not the persons of princes, nor regardeth the 
rich more than the poor. The appeal is full 
of meaning, as it is of honesty and truth di- 
vine How shall we escape if we neglect 

so great salvation ? Ponder this, ye frivolous, 
ye vain ! 

The other class, to which we refer, is con- 
stituted of those, who read the Bible indeed, 
who respect it generally as divinely inspired, 
who acknowledge the duty of reading it, and 
who perform the duty with a general and a 
vague reverence for the grandeur and the so- 
lemnity of its inculcations; but who never 
adequately understand what it means ; whose 
intelligence of its sense is so loose, and often 
so erroneous, that very little, if at all, are 
they spiritually benefited by the perusal. 
What merchant could conduct a prosperous 
commerce, if he did not more correctly un- 
derstand all the documents he reads, writes, 
or signs, in connection with it ? And is it 

safe to transact business for eternity, on prin- 
4* 



3S INTRODUCTORY OBSERVATIONS 

ciples too superficial and presumptuous for 
the transactions of time ? 

The examples of this guilty error are in- 
numerable. Every one is something of an 
original in this. He has his own way of 
neglecting and slighting the inspiration that 
he reads. The amount of genuine intelli- 
gence, is very small, compared with the 
quantum of reading performed, and the myri- 
ads of persons, professors and non-professors, 
who are condemned by the interrogatory, 
Understandest thou what thou readest ? No ! 
Some of them seem to regard it as profane, 
or dangerous, even to think of knocking that 
it may be opened. Some tell us that investi- 
gation leads to skepticism. If it does — to ar- 
gue a moment from such premises of stupidi- 
ty — it leads away from something quite as 
bad, and much more unpromising ; a dreamy 
and mechanical habit that profanes the ser- 
vice, a wholesale belief that is little better 
than a retail infidelity, and a bigoted dark- 
ness that makes a merit of its own irreligious 
folly and selfishness. How long must a man 
travel round a circle to find its end — How far 
must a wandering peasant miss his way, and 



INTRODUCTORY OBSERVATIONS 39 

proceed in that direction, so as to get home — 
How sincerely or extensively must a bewil- 
dered helmsman steer his vessel wrong, at 
sea, in order to make at last the desired ha- 
ven — How many miracles, that were never 
wrought, and that never will be, must God 
perform, so as to make folly as good as wis- 
dom, error as precious as truth, or supersti- 
tion as salutary to the soul as the light of the 
knowledge of the glory of God in the face of 
Jesas Christ ? 

If we could persuade these readers to pause 
and think — as they proceed ; to read only 
one-tenth at a time, of their ordinary allow- 
ance, and to read it ten times better than 
their ordinary performance ; to inquire, as they 
would in perusal of a letter from a well-be- 
loved, long-absent, and far-distant friend, 
What does he mean — What is the precise 
sense of this passage — Am I not in danger of 
mistaking his view r s here, and thus of injuring 
his deservings and embarrassing our corres- 
pondence ? and if they were in the habit of 
this common caution, in the most uncommon 
and momentous relations of existence, how 
would genuine divine knowledge circulate in 



40 INTRODUCTORY OBSERVATIONS 

the world, to the improvement of the good 
and the advantage of the whole community ! 
The great business of the ministers of reli- 
gion, as the advocates of scripture, consists 
much in disabusing it. The grand desidera- 
tum of the wise, in reference to the revealed 
oracles, is to understand them, and to present 
them, precisely as they are. Their intrinsic 
excellence is at one with inspiration itself; 
which is sovereign of the world of sentiment, 
just as its Great Author is Sovereign of the 
universe of intelligences. Hence are the Ho- 
ly Scriptures their own commendation and 
eulogium. " Speak of me as I am," ex- 
claims the Moor in the fable. Surely this is 
a claim of sufficient modesty. So God will 
speak to all men, and to every man, in the 
day of judgment. What will then be our 
condemnation, is his own praise forever ; that 
each should be thought of, and spoken of, as 
he is ! Thus truth is appropriately and su- 
premely the praise of Jehovah. It is the po- 
etry of his praise, even with angelic minis- 
ters and minstrels around his throne. Flat- 
tery, mistake, extravagance, has nothing to 
do with it ; as falsehood has nothing, igno- 



INTRODUCTORY OBSERVATIONS 4? 1 

ranee nothing, and insincerity nothing, in 
that world of perfection and love. 

What is true of their Author, is analogous- 
ly true of the Holy Scriptures themselves. 
" Speak of them as they are. Nothing ex- 
tenuate, nor set down aught in malice.' 5 But 
oh ! how terribly abused is that Book, the 
Bible ! How many of its professed expound- 
ers speak of it as it is — not ! They dictate 
to it ; they sectarianize from it ; they torture 
its testimonies ; they perplex its argumenta- 
tion ; they mistake its meaning ; they super- 
sede its doctrine ; they discern not its utility ; 
they impose their own sense, or their ow T n 
nonsense, and then advertise the result as its 
sense ; and they often blunder at its phraseo 
logy, misunderstand its scope, sunder rudely 
its connection, pervert its metaphors, put 
figurative for literal and literal for figurative ; 
and thus they bear the burdens, and carry the 
messages of the Lord to men, so as no foot- 
man or common messenger on earth could be 
endured, by him that sendeth him, were he as 
careless, as presumptuous, as silly, as superfi- 
cial, or as unfaithful. Wo be unto me if I 
preach not the gospel. 



42 INTRODUCTORY OBSERVATIONS 

Why, says one, did not God give us a 
volume that we could not pervert or miscon- 
ceive ? This silly question is so common, 
that we give it, for that reason only, a pass- 
ing notice. We answer — 

1. It is a plain matter of fact, and mo- 
mentous as well as palpable, that He has not 
done it. On the contrary, the Bible is a 
wonderful Book in this respect, as well as 
others, that it is so very susceptible of per- 
version. There is no error, philosophism, or 
foolery, that may not be plausibly vindicated, 
and speciously proved, from its pages. If a 
man latently desires to be wrong, or to es- 
cape from what is right, or to sanction some 
lie of his own, the Bible will afford him a 
pretext not only, but a perfect paradise, in 
which to luxuriate by the ingenious perver- 
sion of its principles. 

And wherefore ? will not God impart his light 
To them that ask it ? Freely. 5 Tis his joy. 
His glory, and his nature, to impart. 
But to the proud, uncandid, insincere, 
Or negligent inquirer, not a spark. 

Hence, Unitarianism, Universalism, Armini- 
anism, Pelagianism, Transcendentalism, Pan- 



INTRODUCTORY OBSERVATIONS. 43 

theism, Coleridgism, Perfectionism, and a 
thousand other isms — down to Mormonism 
and Puseyism, affect to vindicate their inven- 
tions by an appeal to its pages. 

2. The demand for such an oracle, is vir- 
tually a claim that God would release us all 
from all obligation, or devolve its total volume 
only on himself, and so make it the only 
object of his government, to save us all, by 
all means, and at all events. What a premi- 
um for indolence, presumption, voluptuous in- 
dulgence, and all manner of squalid unright- 
eousness, were such a boon to us, and such 
a system of things, as it would by fearful 
revolution introduce ! What impiety even to 
desire it ! 

3. We are accountable as well as sinful, 
and on probation under a system of grace ; 
and as such, the Bible as it is, is the very 
Book which Infinite Wisdom and Goodness 
saw fit and suitable for us ; and if w r e err, it 
is plainly our own fault, and to be referred, 
as such, to the faulty causes in us that influ- 
enced the deviation. 

Besides all this, every one must take the 
consequences of his own actions. He must 



4* INTRODUCTORY OBSERVATIONS 

reap as he sows, and what he sows. Mil- 
lions, who talk about the truth, and show 
externally as its friends, are inwardly its 
grace-abandoned enemies. And the Lord 
knoweth them. And for this cause, namely, 
because they received not the love of the truth 
that they might be saved, for this cause, 
God shall send them strong delusion, that 
they should believe a lie, that they all might 
be damned,* who believed not the truth, but 
had pleasure in unrighteousness. 

The demand therefore for an oracle that 

WE COULD NOT PERVERT OR MISCONCEIVE, is a 

demand the most unreasonable and impious ; 
however it may coincide with the feelings of 
sinners, or the imaginings of popish infalli- 
bility, or suit the miserable worshippers of 
tradition. It is a demand to have our ac- 
countableness repealed ; the law of God ab- 
rogated ; the system of probation annulled ; 
the whole Bible superseded or totally revolu- 
tionized ; the divine moral government anni- 
hilated : and instead of these, a scheme of 
things introduced, of mechanical fate and 

* This word ought always to be pronounced solemnly 
in two syllables. 



INTRODUCTORY OBSERVATIONS 45 

purely passive destiny ; in which God should 
be the sole moral agent in the universe, and 
he properly no moral agent either ; the salva- 
tion of his throne should become only physi- 
cal ; the system of redemption then must be 
forever precluded ; the rewards and punish- 
ments of eternity should become things impos- 
sible as the qualities of sin or holiness ; and 
universal confusion and anarchy must ensue 
throughout all his dominions. Let us then 
approve of our accountableness, submit to 
the sovereign wisdom of God in the appoint- 
ment of our condition and all its relations 
on the earth, and so seek, that we may 
obtain, in Christ Jesus, the knowledge and the 
salvation he has so graciously revealed. His 
testimonies are true, his promises are infalli- 
ble ; and both are rich, suited to us, and suffi- 
cient for us. 

The volume of inspiration exists, near to 
us and accessible to all. Every man has an 
important relation to it ; and whether he im- 
proves it or not, that volume will instru- 
mentally judge him in the great day. John 
12: 48. The only escape is in piety and 
the inheritance of the divine mercy. To 
5 



46 INTRODUCTORY OBSERVATIONS 

make men read the Bible more, and in a 
way of more profit, is our great desire. In 
order to this, who can tell the importance of 
teaching them, to think while they read ! to 
doubt, only that they may examine ! to pon- 
der, only that they may understand — approve 
— trust — and love, the true sayings of God ? 
If we can in any way assist or prompt such a 
process, and such a habit, we shall realize a 
grand attainment. And if, in doing it, it 
may be ours to correct mistakes, in reference 
to the sense of important passages, however 
hallowed " by authority" or ancestral dotage 
may be in certain cases the superseded view, 
we may say, with the blessed Paul, I therein 
do rejoice, yea, and mil rejoice. 

It is observed by some writer, that " passive 
impressions and active habits" make up the 
education and the sentiment of the million. 
They take some impression passively and inci- 
dentally ; never inquire into its quality or truth ; 
allow it a residence in their bosoms ; yield un- 
consciously to its influence ; and then, insensi- 
bly and soon, act, as it were, by system, in ac- 
cordance with it. In the meantime the im- 
pression is wholly or partially erroneous, and 



INTRODUCTORY OBSERVATIONS 47 

its influence perverts the way of its victim. 
It attaints all his modes of thinking, speak- 
ing, acting, and reasoning. Hence, if he is 
born and nurtured a Jew, his passive impres- 
sions are allowed to keep him one, in spite 
of the dreaded light of Christianity ; and so 
of a unitarian, a papist, an infidel, a formalist, 
a ritualist, or any other votary of falsehood. 

The exceptions to the rule are only the 
confirmations of its truth. The special grace 
of God makes millions of them. But imper- 
fect as grace itself depictures us in this world, 
it is surprising to see among good men how 
many flaming examples of the rule, we find, 
where we might expect its exceptions only. 
A man reads a passage of scripture, or listens 
to some other reader ; and this perhaps in 
early life, when most susceptible of impres- 
sions and least capable of manly thought ; 
he takes an impression, and that a wrong 
one, of its meaning. Alas! truth could 
scarce stamp him more indelibly, with her 
royal signet. He becomes a preacher, a 
scholar, a divine. All his sanction goes for 
his impression — which he has never examin- 
ed or doubted. He guards it with religious 



48 INTRODUCTORY OBSERVATIONS 

horror against all correction and all investi- 
gation. He writes a sermon, or perhaps a 
commentary ; and there it is, dominant and 
invincible, defying argument, evidence, scrip- 
ture, and God ; and this, till the man dies, 
though his error lives after him. 

How often has a text been misconceived 
in its meaning ; owing probably to an error 
in the translation ; or to a vicious punctua- 
tion ; or to a doting carelessness : when the 
result is a sermon as the fruit of the mistake ; 
then a new ism, with a brief immortality for 
its maker's name prefixed to it ; then perhaps 
a whole sect started, to take care of the 
sinuous progeny, and nurse it to some growth 
of monstrous maturity and mischief. Those 
who have studied a little the history of sects 
and isms and schisms, modern or ancient, 
will recognise the truth of the description. 
They will also unite with others, in the de- 
sire that such evils may not be enacted, over 
and over again, in all coming generations. 
Let us then do something to prevent them. 
Let us try to show scripture as it is. Some 
of its imperfections in our vernacular, have 
resulted from the change of language, since 



INTRODUCTORY OBSERVATIONS 49 

the present English version was made, in the 
beginning of the seventeenth century, now 
( 1842) more than 230 years ago. 

In the just interpretation of scripture, two 
things are primarily to be considered — 

1. Its inspiration. It is theopneuston, 
that is, given by inspiration of God. Its 
propositions are not only true, but they are 
divinely true. They are the true sayings of 
God. They are his living oracles. It is God 
that speaks in them. This truth lies at the 
basis of Christianity. The man who feels it 
not, or who disparages it in any way, de- 
serves to be regarded as an infidel rather 
than a Christian, as a blasphemer rather 
than a theologian. It is just this great 
truth of truths, all scripture is given by 
inspiration of god, that invests the Bible with 
all its incomparable authority and importance. 
And it is the belief of this great truth, that 
makes the contents of scripture seem to be, 
as truly they are, so worthy of study and uni- 
versal attention. 

2. Every passage of scripture means 
something, which it is the direct object of 
the interpreter, and the proper duty of the 
5* 



50 INTRODUCTORY OBSERVATIONS 

preacher, to ascertain and communicate. 
As God is its Author, so God, when he in- 
spired it, meant something specific in the 
words he used. There is no alternative ; 
but to deny inspiration, or to degrade scrip- 
ture to the ambiguous impertinence of the 
heathen oracles — which is the same thing. 

Now, we read the words of God, and ask, 
What is his meaning, here and everywhere ? 
That meaning is what is intended, though 
somewhat technically, by the native sense — 
the soul of scripture — the mind of the Spirit. 

To find and use the native sense of scrip- 
ture, is the grand desideratum of theology. 
It is just what the church needs, and what 
the world needs, and what our schools of 
theology primely need. It is that which 
hath the dominion. Who can surpass it, or 
supersede it, or dispense with it ? Nay, 
whose interest is it to mistake it, or to be 
ignorant of it, or to sophisticate, or to conceal 
it ? Its worth cannot be calculated by any 
arithmetic of creatures, or equaled by any 
imaginable aggregation of riches. 

Too often is it superseded, or rendered un- 
intelligible, or diluted until it becomes ele- 



INTRODUCTORY OBSERVATIONS 51 

gantly insipid, by the learned theories, the 
studied style, the fine writing, and the im- 
pertinent inventions of men. We are not 
as many who corrupt [dilute] the word of 
God, The foolishness of God is wiser than 
men. The prophet that hath a dream, let him 
tell a dream ; and he that hath my word, let 
him speak my word faithfully. What is the 
chaff to the wheat ? saith the Lord. 

It is accordingly our aim in every passage 
to evolve its proper meaning, its native sense ; 
and so to disabuse it of whatever errors may 
have dishonored its heavenly beauty. In 
doing this it is our view at once to aid the 
thoughts of ordinary readers, and to give 
some possibly useful hints to whatever preach- 
er of the gospel may deign to read our per- 
formance. There are some masters in Israel, 
who seem never to have thought, or serious- 
ly believed, that there is such a thing as the 
native sense ! 

The Greek of the New Testament is cer- 
tainly peculiar. Whatever may be the rea- 
son of this, which is not now our inquiry, it 
is a fact which the interpreter must consider. 
So the style of every writer is peculiar, among 



52 INTRODUCTORY OBSERVATIONS 

all the eight. Paul and Luke are by far the 
most elevated and learned in their style and 
their education. They were fellow travelers, 
intimate friends, and similar in their manner 
and phraseology. Each of them shows the 
scholar, as well as the amanuensis of the in- 
spiring Spirit. John is thought to be the 
least learned, though so seraphic in his piety; 
uniting simplicity and sublimity in a way 
unequaled : witness his prodigy of the Apoca- 
lypse ! Matthew and Mark resemble each 
other in plain and unadorned narrative, stating 
facts with the greatest truth but with no em- 
bellishment. The style of Peter is some- 
times involved and difficult. So of Jude. 
James is ethical, practical, severe, insisting 
on the fruits of piety : but withal very intel- 
ligible, discriminative, and ordinarily precise. 
Now T it is plain that all these peculiarities, 
and all such as these, must be studied, and 
duly estimated, in order to arrive at the na- 
tive sense of every writer. Hence it is not 
the Lexicon alone, far from it, that can show 
that sense to the interpreter. The opposite 
mistake has made more than one sect of 
literalizing exclusionists. The Lexicon or- 



INTRODUCTORY OBSERVATIONS 53 

dinarily gives only the general or classical 
sense, with little or no demonstration or re- 
gard to the usage of the inspired writers. 
Hence many a theologian has learnedly 
misrepresented a passage, with the consent 
of the Lexicon and multiplied classical au- 
thorities : and so has edified the bigotry or 
schism of his hearers, most speciously and 
quite sincerely too. Unless we can deter- 
mine the usus loquendi of a sacred writer, 
that is, the very sense in w 7 hich he uses the 
word in question, our classics will often per- 
vert our way and infatuate our judgment. 
The style of the New Testament is that of 
Hellenistic Hebrew ; a Jewish matron with a 
Greek pallium thrown over her. 

If a word is peculiar or distinctive, it may 
be proper not only to compare other places 
of its occurrence, but to note all the instan- 
ces in which the same writer uses it, and 
ponder them singly and totally. We may 
do the same with advantage in reference to 
all the other books or writers of the New 
Testament. It will often be of auxiliary 
usefulness, to enumerate and consult all the 
instances in which the word occurs at large, 



54* INTRODUCTORY OBSERVATIONS 

and all in particular in which it is used 
by the same writer. Every theologian, that 
has proved the value of a good concordance 
— Schmidii, for example — to this end, will 
approve the sayings of a modern preacher ; 
" my Greek Testament and my Greek Con- 
cordance are to me the most important books 
in my library ; and as a preacher, nay as a 
Christian, their worth seems to me incalcula- 
ble." 

If the word in question occurs infrequent- 
ly, once, for example, in the whole volume 
of the New Tesstament or twice, or thrice, or, 
at best, in a few instances ; or, if it appears 
frequently, say fifty, or a hundred times, or 
oftener, the knowledge of the fact, as it is in 
each case, may be of great importance to the 
student. It gives him a blush or synopsis of 
what he has to do, and also of his means of 
investigation and comparison. The evidence 
is before him. He sees how often it occurs 
in Paul — in Luke — in John, or any other 
writer; and his mind receives suggestions 
and facilities for a successfully prosecuted 
examination. To compare such related in- 
stances, and withal get no new ideas of the 



INTRODUCTORY OBSERVATIONS 55 

sense of scripture, no fresh occasions of 
knowledge divinely important, is perhaps 
possible : — just as it is possible for some ani- 
mals with long ears — though for them a 
thing much more improbable — to come to a 
pure springhead of living water, when they 
are thirsty, and drink not at all. For one, 
the writer asks leave to record his own con- 
viction that such investigation is the very 
way in which for an educated ministry to 
study the Holy Scriptures ; since he has 
proved its value — far less indeed than duty 
and propriety required, as he owns with sin- 
cere humiliation ; but still — enough to raise 
its excellence very high in the scale of his 
devout estimation. It has given him more 
intelligence in the things of God ; more con- 
viction of what is the truth ; more confidence 
in preaching the gospel ; more elevation 
above the atmosphere of vapors and hobbies 
and isms ; more rich and various furniture for 
the sacred desk ; more stability in religious 
vision ; more joy and peace in believing ; 
and more vigor and equability of faith : and 
so has done him more substantial good, 
probably, than all other ways and means, 



56 INTRODUCTORY OBSERVATIONS 

with the use of all the other books in his 
library. 

It may be alleged, that it is still a dan- 
gerous way, especially to be attempted by 
some preachers. We reply — It is very dan- 
gerous for some men to be preachers ! Some 
preachers are not in their vocation, and for 
them preaching itself is a tremendous service 
of presumption and folly. Has God any 
need of corrupters or simpletons or drivelers 
at his altars ? Has he called them ? Will 
he bless them ? Can they return to a more 
suitable occupation one moment too soon ? 
But if, in addition to genuine piety, they pos- 
sess a sound and respectable natural under- 
standing, and are decently learned, will any 
man allege that they cannot be trusted with 
the Greek Testament and the Greek Concor- 
dance ? Why ? Is it because the dark 
ages w T ere better than the reformed ages ? 
or human authority preferable to the very 
words which the Holy Ghost teacheth? or 
ignorance a good qualification for the am- 
bassador of Christ ? or mist, and vapor, and 
impenetrable fog, proper for the eye of the 
church and the medium of its vision ? Are 



INTRODUCTORY OBSERVATIONS 57 

we puseyites, or has the newman-ia of Ox- 
ford made us rabid and immedicable ? or do 
we desire to go to Rome for information, and 
get scripture interpreted at the head-quarters 
of all ghostly " authority? 5 ' There shall be 
false teachers among you — let them alone; 
they be blind leaders of the blind—from such 
withdraw thyself—from such turn away. 

It is too often the case that an interpreter 
is contented with what the passage will 
bear ? now, poor sufferer ! it is astonishing 
often to see what it will bear and what bur- 
dens it has to bear. It is not the Inquisition 
alone that tortures the witnesses. In the 
meantime, the torturer is contented because 
the sense imposed is possibly true in itself, 
and in its place perhaps might be very salu- 
tary doctrine. Still, the question returns ; 
Is it the native sense of the passage ? or, 
only an extraneous graft or insertion '? If the 
latter, Is this interpretation % Is it the way 
of a workman that needeth not tobe ashamed ? 
Alas ! even in pious and learned commen- 
taries, when we consult them as aids to the 
sense, how often do they rather beguile us 
away from it, with their voluminous irrele- 
6 



58 INTRODUCTORY OBSERVATIONS 

vant remarks on some other topics; as if 
their devotional exuberance and impertinent 
goodishness, were better than directly meet- 
ing the point, and either explaining it, or 
honestly confessing, ' I do not know !' It is 
not often that greatness is so ingenuous y or, 
that the deep saith, It is not in me ; however 
honest, and true, and neccessary, the aver- 
ment would seem — if it were only once 
made ! 

The punctuation of the scriptures, both 
original and translated, is entirely the work 
of man. As it is not at all identified with 
inspiration, and serves only to illustrate, or 
often to obscure and even to pervert it, it is 
per se of no authority and requires to be 
jealously examined by the interpreter. 
Punctuation is commentary. Dreadful that 
it should sometimes be obscuration and per- 
version too ! The Masoretic points are a 
commentary on the text of the original He- 
brew, that sometimes becomes very unfriend- 
ly and really perilous in a high degree to 
the native sense ; requiring a deeper erudi- 
tion in that department, touching the phi- 
losophy of the oriental tongues, for its cor- 



INTRODUCTORY OBSERVATIONS 59 

rection, than any that is ordinarily attained 
even by our eminent scholars. But our re- 
marks at present respect mainly our common 
English version of the New Testament. 
How often does the sense live or die, by the 
presence or the removal of a single point ; 
and often by the marks of a parenthesis, or 
by their absence where the sense natively de- 
pends on them ! often by mistaking irony 
for direct statement, or a phrase, or an idiom, 
or some other figurative peculiarity of the 
original, for a grave literality that must by 
all means be transferred into our uncongeni- 
al English ! 

It is frequently the case that the mood in 
the original is perfectly equivocal, and must 
be resolved on general principles, whether it 
be indicative, imperative, or interrogative; 
since the form of the verb, in the second 
person plural, for example, is often, in all 
these cases, precisely one and the same. 
Yet the difference of rendering, by mistake, 
is sometimes prodigious, both for absurdity 
and impropriety of sentiment ; and this where 
it is authorized already in the common ver- 
sion. It were easy to produce instances of 



60 INTRODUCTORY OBSERVATIONS 

this, though less in place in this connection. 
Our translators, and printers, and editors, and 
polyglot notators, have sometimes erred, in 
their supplemental italicizing; in their mar- 
ginal readings ; and especially in their way 
of cutting up the sacred text into chapters 
and verses. A common letter to a friend 
could ill endure such artificial and often care- 
less or at least erring mutilations. Some- 
times our translators are commentators too, 
giving a gloss of their own to the injury of 
the sense of the original; and though we 
acquit them in the main of all intentional 
error, and esteem them very highly in love 
for their work's sake, yet we think their im- 
perfections ought to be noted and their mis- 
takes appreciated. 

A genuine protestant theologian, aims 
singly at the word of God, and its correct 
interpretation, according to the native sense. 
He is great, sound, safe, good, and excellent, 
only as he achieves and exemplifies this pure 
and rare professional orthodoxy ; this identi- 
ty of perfect wisdom ; this vitality of the 
mind of the Spirit. It is this alone that 
shall endure the ordeal of fire, to the test of 



INTRODUCTORY OBSERVATIONS 61 

which all so called christian doctrines shall 
be unsparingly subjected. What a confla- 
gration ! Folly shall not there usurp the 
place of wisdom ; nor human authority or 
exclusive arrogance exalt itself above all 
that is called God or that is ivorshipped. No 
man shall retain a technicality of learning, or 
a symbol of orthodoxy, or a phrase of cant- 
ing clannishness, that cannot endure that 
penetrating and impartial examiner, when 
the fire shall try every man's work of what 
sort it is. O that we were all practically 
wise to anticipate the decisions of that day 
and to correspond with them ! God will 
honor all his own truth, as he revealed it to 
us, and in its native sense, as gold, silver, 
precious stones, on which not even the fire 
can make any impression : while all other 
materials of the house that any man has 
builded, though on the one alone true jfotm- 
dation that is laid, which is Jesus Christ, 
shall be proved combustible and contempti- 
ble, as wood, hay, stubble, and shall perish 
unpitied in the powerful flame. A sense of 
this ought to make the student reverential 
and careful, the theologian humble and dis- 
6* 



62 INTRODUCTORY OBSERVATIONS 

criminating, the interpreter faithful and wise, 
the protestant impartial and intrepid for his 
God. It ought to induce the spirit and the 
qualifications of devotion and prayer; that 
the Father of lights, who is also the Father 
of spirits and the Father of mercies, would 
be pleased to vouchsafe his own all-com- 
manding influence, to prosper our researches 
and preserve us in the truth. 



SELECTION I. 
TO DO IT BY AND BY 

The phrase by and by occurs four times in 
the New Testament, and is always ambiguous 
to the common reader. In modern use it fair- 
ly means — after a while ; some time hence ; 
not now. It is used to indicate postpone- 
ment and prevent urgency. Thus, a speaker 
in Congress, when interrupted, w r as heard to 
rejoin — 'Let the gentleman have patience. 
I know at what he aims, we shall come to it 
by and by.' This is now the usage of the 
English world. But it is nearly the very 
reverse of the usage in England two centu- 
ries ago, when our version was made. Thus, 
by and by was originally one of the strongest 
adverbial forms to express— near, this instant, 
presto, with no delay, on the moment, quick- 
ly, very quickly. 

The reason of this change, which was 
gradually introduced, is probably found in the 



64 " SELECTION I. 

dilatoriness of human nature ; spoiling all the 
adverbs in our language, which properly- 
mean instant despatch. i Come here, my 
child,' says a parent ; the answer is, ' Yes, 
directly ;' and he stays, as he intended. So 
1 immediately, presently, coming, coming/ 
when the speakers mean that it shall be not 
now, but after a time, or at their leisure ! 
The spirit of procrastination has perverted by 
and by to suit its purpose. The sinner ought 
to repent by and by in the original sense of 
the expression. 

All promise^ is poor dilatory man ; 
And that through every age. 

Mat. 13 : 21. Christ says of the stony- 
ground hearer, when tribulation or persecu- 
tion ariseth because of the word, by and by 
he is offended. 

Campbell says, instantly. There can be 
no doubt about the meaning of the original, 
svOvg or evdecog. 

Mark, 6 : 25. / mill that thou give me 
by and by in a charger the head of John the 
Baptist. 



TO DO IT BY AND BY 65 

We once saw an eloquent sermon on this 
text, designed to show that 

< A shameless woman is the worst of men ;* 

in which it was a distinct item in the account, 
' fourthly/ or otherwise, that here the malice 
of Herodias was so deep and calculating, so 
deliberate and well considered. The point was 
urged to this effect, 

You see, my brethren, how the compara- 
tively artless Salome betrays her prompter. 
She enters, being before instructed of her 
mother, and orders her speech warily before 
the king; as if to say, 'not now exactly, to 
spoil our high festivity or interrupt the pro- 
gress of our glee. But two or three hours 
hence, when the dancing is over, and the 
revelry ceased, and the company gone, then 
I desire the boon, at thy pleasure, by and by? 

Herod however, it seems, understood her 
more correctly. And immediately the king 
sent an executioner — and he went and behead- 
ed him in the prison. 

Luke, 17 : 7. But which of you, having 
a servant plowing or feeding cattle, will say 
unto him by and by, when he is come from the 



66 SELECTION I. 

field, Go and sit down to meat ? And will 
not rather say unto him, Make ready where- 
ivith I may step, and gird thyself, and serve 
me, till I have eaten and drunken, and after- 
ward thou shalt eat and drink. 

Here the sense of immediately is necessary 
to the understanding of the passage; and 
when perceived, the propriety of it proves it- 
self completely. 

Luke, 21:9. But when ye shall hear of 
wars and commotions, be not terrified : for 
these things must first come to pass ; but the 
end is not by and by ; is not soon or imme- 
diately. 

That is, they will not terminate so soon as 
you might imagine ; they will succeed each 
other and continue to try you. 

All this results from the change of the mean- 
ing of words and phrases in the space of two 
or three centuries ; and there are, and ever 
will be many more such instances, in our 
English not only, but also in French, Ger- 
man, and all other modern and living lan- 
guages. Nor is this wonderful. It is the 
character of language in every age. Hor- 
race remarked it some years before the 



TO DO IT BY AND BY 67 

birth of the Savior ; and it will be a source 
of incessant and insidious changes in all sub- 
sequent ages. On this account peculiarly, the 
vigilance of the critics must be continually 
active ; that the sense, which never changes, 
may be preserved in its immutability, through 
all the verbal mutations of our complicate 
and copious vernacular. 

Bebemur morti nos nosffaque. 

* * * mortalia facta peribunt ; 
Necdum sermonum stet honos et gratia vivax. 
I Multa renascentur quae jam cecidere ; cadentque 
Quae nunc sunt in honore vocabula, si volet usus ; 
Quern penes arbitrium est, et jus, et norma loquendi. 

Both we and ours must die ! all deeds of ours 
Perish forgotten with their names and powers. 
The grace of language changes still with time ; 
Words obsolete shall yet renew their prime : 
And those shall fall that now in honor live ; 
Since such is custom's stern prerogative. 
Whate'er she wills the realm of words obeys ; 
And wisdom follows but to learn her ways. 



SELECTION II. 

THE AX LAID AT THE ROOT 

Mat. 3 : 10. Jlnd now also the ax is 
laid unto the root of the trees ; therefore 
every tree which bringeth not forth good fruit, 
is hewn down and cast into the fire. 

The same identically occurs in Luke, 3 • 9. 

Let us not forget that the passage before 
us is a part of that abstract, afforded us by 
two evangelists, of the preaching of John, 
the herald and the harbinger of Christ. It 
was his purpose to characterize and describe 
the coming age under the Messiah ; and so 
to correct the false anticipations of his coun- 
trymen, as well as to define and impress the 
truth, in contradistinction to their loose and 
vague and dreamy conceptions of its nature. 
Hence his words are applicable to us, to the 
times and constitutions of heaven under which 
we live. Hence too their great importance, 
as characterizing the Christian dispensation. 

By a dispensation in this chief and techni- 
cal, yet scriptural sense of the term, we 



THE AX LAID AT THE ROOT 69 

mean ; An authoritative system or constitu- 
tion of things in religion, relating to the 
church of God and the order of his worship 
among men, in which, by certain characteris- 
tic forms and with definite degrees of light, 
the will of God is manifested, and our duty 
indicated and modified in relation to it, so that 
acceptable worship can be rendered only in 
obedience and cordial conformity to it* And 
the vjorld passeth away^ and the lust thereof; 

but HE THAT DOETH THE WILL OF GOD aMdeth 

forever. 

The dispensations revealed in the Word of 

God, are seven \ namely, 

Paradisiacal, lasting, as some have theorized, 40 days. 
Adamic, .... . 1656 years. 

Noahic, . . till A.M. 2083 . 427 « 
Abrahamic, . « « « 2513 . 430 " 

Mosaic, . . « « " 4038f . 1525 " 
Christian, indubitably till the end of the world, and 
thus far 34 years less than the Christian era ; 
as 1842—34=1808. 
Immortality, who can compute the years, the eras, the 
' cycles, of eternity ! 

* Compare Ep. 1 : 10, with Gal. 4 : 4. Heb. 1 : 2. 
9 : 10. 28. 12 : 26-29. 1 Pet. 1 : 20. 1 John 2:7.8. 
lCor. 11: 26. Acts, 1: 11. 

f According to the vulgar era, which ought to com- 
mence four years earlier. 
7 



70 SELECTION II. 

The first was not of the gospel, but of the 
law ; probationing the species under it in the 
persons of our first parents ; and the last, 
though of the gospel, is not in time : hence, 
the dispensations of the everlasting gospel in 
time are five only, each named from the per- 
sonage who officiates at the head of it ; name- 
ly, Adam, Noah, Abraham, Moses, Christ. 

Each dispensation is surpassed by that 
which supersedes it, and all the excellence of 
the former is included too in its successor. 
Hence, the last in time is the best also. It 
includes all the good of all preceding dis- 
pensations, and it incomparably transcends 
and excels them all. The whole seven may 
be well fixed mnemonically in our minds, by 
a word which the sum of their initials regu- 
larly constitutes — PANAMCI. If the word 
is new, it is useful and not wholly arbitrary. 

How important it is for us to understand 
the dispensation of God under which we 
live ! under which our characters are form- 
ing, our habits becoming permanent, our 
hearts developing themselves, and our desti- 
nies taking their class, and their direction, 
and their flight, for eternity ! We are to ex- 
pect no other dispensation in the present 



THE AX LAID AT THE ROOT 71 

world ; and hence we must improve this, and 
participate its blessedness, or be lost forever 
Hence too, we are to expect the Millennium, 
not as another, but only as the bright meridian 
of the present dispensation. The noon is not 
another day. Hence we are prepared to 
read the credentials of all impostors, whereof 
ancient history, as well as modern times af- 
ford so many examples ; from Manichaeus, 

Montanus, Mohammed, down to all the 

miserable nefandi whose appearance has dis- 
graced our own age and infatuates thousands 
in the nineteenth century, as each the herald 
of another dispensation — which is not another. 
Witness the terrors of some poor dotards, anti- 
cipating the end of the world next year, that 
is, in 1843, for certain ! 

Hence too the great importance of the pas- 
sage we are considering ! It has the jurisdic- 
tion of our times and of all subsequent ages 
to the end of the world. It evinces some of 
the fixed principles of the mediatorial empire, 
which Christ came, by his mission and his 
passion, not to destroy, but to aggrandize and 
fulfil. The same principles have existed in 
all previous dispensations of the system of 



72 SELECTION II. 

mediatorial mercy ; but in the present only 
are they displayed with a light and a glory, to 
which all previous ages were tributary, arid 
which are among the brightest lustres of this 
last best dispensation of the grace of God in 
time. 

The popular meaning of the passage is 
known unhappily throughout the English 
world. We say, unhappily ; since the popu- 
lar meaning is false, injurious, subversive of 
the sense divine, and contrary in spirit and 
scope to the true rendering. It is not only 
an error, but a great error, a common one, a 
dire perversion. 

The point in question is the meaning of 
the figure — laying the ax at the root ; that is, 
popularly, in the act of felling the tree, as an 
incumbrance and a nuisance, putting your 
main strength to it ; hewing up the tree by 
cutting off the roots, and so, in a fierce deras- 
cinating process, not leaving a stump or a 
* vestige of the extirpated tree. 

This idea has often made radical reform- 
ers in church and state, and has sometimes 
given of their spirit to radical preachers. It 
has made fanatics, exscinders, and incendia- 



THE AX LAID AT THE ROOT 73 

ries. It has been the motto of many a reck- 
less leader, whose way has been to level — 
not upward, by elevating the ignoble, but — 
downward only, by sinking the elevated ; by 
denying the real, as well as the factitious, 
differences of society ; and, by a course of 
rash experiments with the social state, the 
tendency of which, whatever may be either 
the motive or the consequence, is only to re- 
enact the profligate horrors of the French 
revolution, with its butchery, its anarchy, and 
its atheism. They say, " spare not ; lay the 
ax at the root, make thorough work, fear 
nothing. 55 

The true sense is very different and per- 
fectly defensible ; even as patience, forbear- 
ance, gracious probation, and merciful delay, 
solemn w r arning and ample space for repent- 
ance, are different from haste, fury, and reck- 
lessness, cutting up by the roots — as if the 
process of felling, and the demand for fruit, 
commenced at the same time and with the 
same tree. Is this like the ways of our God ? 

We give the true view in paraphrase — And 
now also, throughout this dispensation of 
which I am the herald, the ax lieth on the 
7* 



74 SELECTION I. 

ground in readiness, near the root of the tr ee. 
It is quiescent arid inactive. It reposeth 
there conspicuous, in waiting and in warning ; 
with solemn menace of its ultimate use, if, 
after a graciously vouchsafed probation, there 
be no good fruit on the trees ; since then, at 
last, it must be used, and every such tree 
shall be felled as incorrigible, and made fuel 
to the inexorable flame. Compare Luke, 
13 : 6-9. Heb. 6 : 7, 8. 

The false view has been occasioned in part 
by a frequent equivoque in our language, be- 
tween lay and lie. The former or active has 
been erroneously preferred to the neuter sense, 
and hence the grand mistake. There is 
something similar in Latin, between jacio or 
jacitur, to hurl, cast, throw, and jaceo, orjacet, 
to lie, recline, rest, or remain in a state of de- 
cumbency. The version of Beza follows the 
Vulgate, indifferently, thus ; " securis ad radi- 
cem arborum posita est ;" and scarce a com- 
mentator or a preacher ever gives the cor- 
rect rendering of the figure. The reason may 
be, first, that the passive first impression 
of every one of us, to whom the Eng- 
lish is vernacular, is in agreement with 



THE AX LAID AT THE ROOT 75 

the erring view ; and second, that it is so 
much the natural temper of man, as having 
more of passion than principle, to he impa- 
tient and leveling, that he more spontaneous- 
ly inclines to the wrong, than the right, in its 
interpretation. There are some divines of 
illustrious name, who cannot bear the idea 
even of probation, or so much as the bona fide 
offer of the gospel and its salvation to them 
that perish; because it suits their symbols 
and their sympathies to despatch all in a 
word — with their view of the decrees of 
God. To such theories, facts are of no im- 
portance ; they are mist and emptiness ! 

There can be no doubt of the correct view. 
In the original it is as clear as the sun. The 
word xenm, rendered is laid, or lieth, par- 
takes not of the active sense at all, but 
of the neuter only. A few examples 
of its occurrence will show this to the 
satisfaction even of the English reader. 
A city that is set on a hill cannot be hid. Come, 
see the place where the Lord lay. And they 
came with haste, and found Mary, and Joseph, 
and the babe lying in a manger. This child is 
set for the fall and rising again of many in 
Israel. Other foundation can no man lay than 



76 SELECTION II. 

that is laid, which is Jesus Christ. Knowing 
that I am set for the defence of the gospel. 
And the city lieth four square ; the length 
and the breadth and the height of it are equal. 
The whole literature of the English lan- 
guage is infected with the wrong view of 
this passage. Instead of other examples, w r e 
cite that of Lord Brougham, who is thought 
by some to be, if not the wisest man, yet the 
greatest paragon of universal learning* now 

* It is impossible as a universal genius, if there be 
properly any such thing, to be equally profound or 
ready in every chapter of the encyclopedia of letters 
and the arts. Dr. Watts perhaps came nearer to it 
than any other man known to literature. When Lord 
Brougham occupied the throne of the chancery of Eng- 
land, the well versed lawyers in that astute department 
of British jurisprudence, were sometimes the cruel, 
sometimes the just, censors of defects and errors, 
against which neither the fame of scholarship, nor un- 
paralleled popularity, nor the honors of recent peer- 
age, afforded an adequate protection to his lordship. 
Sir Edward Sugden, that star of professional learning, 
was especially severe on some occasions, and never 
without reaching the sensitiveness of his " shining 
mark." After listening once, it is said, to the florid and 
laical wisdom of his lordship, in one of those decisions 
of renown by which he was wont to clear so soon the 
calendar of cases, without clearing equally the points 
of law involved in them, Sir Edward showed his wit and 



THE AX LAID AT THE ROOT 71. 

on the stage. We give from memory the pas- 
sage, in the main, much as it was uttered. 
His Lordship was speaking in parliament 
on the slavery question, with reference to the 
repeal of the system of apprenticeship, and 
in favor of universal and absolute emancipa- 
tion as its substitute, when he said something 
like the following — 

" My Lords, we have hitherto been tam- 
pering with this great evil, this poisoned and 
pestiferous Upas of human degradation. We 
have indeed hewn off some of the exterior 

his indignation equally by the reflection — "What a 
pity his lordship did not know a little of chancery 
law! because then his lordship would know a little 
of almost every thing." 

We have no question that his lordship knows a little 
of divinity too, though this possibly in the general ; at 
any rate, we are not to censure severely a layman, even 
if he were the Lord Chancellor of England, because his 
knowledge of sacred philology, criticism, and hermen- 
eutics may be not a little imperfect — when so many of 
the mighty mitres above him, are dark, if not brain- 
less, in those excellent departments of their own nomi- 
nal profession. It is remarkable too that such names 
as those of Chillingworth among the stars of the 
seventeenth century, and my own excellent and learned 
friend, the Reverend Doctor J. H. Merle D'Au- 
bigne, in our own time, use habitually the popular and 
the erroneous conception. 



78 SELECTION II. 

branches, by our apprenticeship act; but yet, 
my Lords, the tree stands, to the dishonor of 
England, the Empire and the age, a scandal 
to our holy religion, and an opprobrious sar- 
casm on our professions of liberty. My Lords, 
we must now do something thorough and 
effective. We must not leave the tree, or 
even its stump standing to reproach us. We 
must come up to the work like men. God 
and the nations are looking at us. The 
muse of history is writing the record of our 
dishonor, and the clamors of the nation de- 
mand the measure at our hands. Let us then, 
my Lords, fell this tree before the world. It 
is high time we were doing it, instead of 
talking about it to no profit. Let us speak 
by actions, my Lords ! Let us lay the ax at 
the root of the tree, responsive alike to the 
language of scripture and the conscience of 
mankind." 

It is not our object here to quarrel with 
the argument of his Lordship, or to pro- 
nounce a benediction on the tree he proposes 
to exterminate; but simply to give an exam- 
ple, and that a prominent one, where hun- 
dreds might be adduced, of the total misap- 



THE AX LAID AT THE ROOT 79 

prehension, and the popular perversion, of 
the figure in the sacred text. His Lordship's 
error is excusable quite, compared with theirs, 
who, occupying the sacred office, never read 
it in the original before they preach on it from 
the translation — or, never understand it, if 
they do. The writer has heard sermons, and 
one quite elaborate, in which the blunder was 
at once blinding, wildering, pitiable, and ut- 
terly subversive of the sense. Now, such a 
sermon, however good the style, or sound the 
general doctrine, or impressive the delivery, 
does ordinarily less for the proper edification 
of the church, than would accrue from the 
simple science of correct explanation. Yet 
this service is appreciated by few. The mil- 
lion of church-goers do not desire to be in- 
structed. They are imaginative and fusible. 
Theirs is a religion of sympathy and sensa- 
tion. They had rather feel — they desire to 
be melted by eloquence — to weep — to feel 
better — to go home and forget it all, praising 
the sermon and collauding the preacher. 

The Christian dispensation properly ex- 
tends from the day of Pentecost to the end of 
time. We are now living under it ; and our 



80 SELECTION II. 

destinies are maturing, as well as developing, 
in subordination to it, continually, and by the 
unchanging constitution of our God. Each 
individual is a tree in his great fruitery or 
orchard. What care, what skill, what cul- 
ture, what forbearance, what merciful proba- 
tion does He show, even to the trees which 
hitherto have produced no good fruit. Some 
of them too are almost a hundred years old \ 
But the ax is ready. It lieth near the root, 
in mercy and in menace. If a tree brings 
forth good fruit, the ax will never hurt it, nor 
the flame touch it. It will soon be kindly 
transplanted to the gardens of paradise. The 
ax will never come into contact with such a 
tree. It might rust and rot near its root, and 
be all innoxious while it lieth there. On such 
trees it hath no more power than the second 
death on them that are blessed and holy. 

And how long does God wait with the 
other sort ! Alas ! sometimes forty, fifty, or 
even one hundred years, and yet no good 
fruit. How does his providence furnish a 
commentary on his word, and give the true 
exegesis of its meaning ! How long does he 
forbear to use the ax, while the long-suffering 



THE AX LAID AT THE ROOT Si 

of God waiteth with men, even as in the days 
of Noah ! This forbearance of God, his pa- 
tience with the wicked, is a wonderful theme ! 
He has no pleasure at all in the death of him 
that dieth. He does not wish to use the ax. 
He is morally — so to speak — forced to it, by 
the final impenitence of the wicked. He 
plants the tree in a good soil. He gives it 
ample cultivation and fair opportunity. The 
rains and the showers, and the dews of hea- 
ven, alternating with the genial heat and 
brightness of the sun, fall on it. And yet 
there is no good fruit. It is a worthless tree. 
The heavenly dove will not build her nest in 
its branches. It is soon deserted, and devoted. 
A tree whose fruit withereth, ivithout fruit, 
twice dead — nigh unto cursing, whose end is 
to be burned. It is at last hewn down and 
cast into the fire. 

The Christian dispensation is different in 
its proper character from the common antici- 
pations and sentiments of men, scarce less, 
than it proved to be from those of the an- 
cient Jews, to whom the announcement we 
are considering was originally made, by the 
harbinger of the Son of God. It is not a 
S 



82 SELECTION II. 

system of partiality, or flattery, or indulgence, 
or indifference, or self-righteousness, on the one 
hand ; nor, on the other, of fatality, or rigor, 
or summary vengeance, or necessitated despair. 
There is plenty of mercy and plenty of re- 
demption for all men ; but no man will be 
saved unless he accepts it. Without actual 
obedience to the gospel no one can be saved. 
Good fruit must be produced. It is indis- 
pensable. The alternative to every tree is 
the' ax and the fire. Nor is there any truth 
in the revealed system to contradict this, or 
supersede it, or disparage it. The influence 
of the Holy Spirit is striving with men, is 
importunate towards us, and long waits on 
us ; but never will it save us without our 
cordial acquiescence. The elect of God are 
identified with them that produce the good 
fruit ; trees of righteousness shall they be 
called, the planting of the Lord, that he may 
be glorified. But how do they glorify him, 
who produce no good fruit ? What promises, 
or what evidences, or what decrees, give as- 
surance of their salvation ? Shall their pre- 
sumption save them, or their supineness ? 
The nature of the fruit, which is the only 



THE AX LAID AT THE ROOT 83 

alternative of the fire, is of great interest and 
moment that it be correctly understood. The 
quality must be estimated as first in the or- 
der of nature, and of time, and of pursuit, 
rather than the quantity. How much, is not 
the prior question, but what kind of fruit 1 
It is not every kind, but only that which God 
approves good, which demonstrates the safety 
of the tree on which it grows. Very much 
that is bad, will not be accepted — because of 
its accumulation or amount. Neither will 
outward deeds and formal services, in which 
the heart is not engaged and the motive 
is not good, avail us, because of their quantity. 
Love is the root both of the graces and the 
services of the Christain. 

Let the spirituality of the revealed system 
be remembered; making the motive to be 
morally the whole action in the eye of Omni- 
science, and rejecting all actions even of out- 
ward utility, worship, or beneficence, unless 
the motive be genuine and holy : when we 
shall discern also the divine reality and the 
perfect reasonableness of the system as spi- 
ritual, and the folly of all other theories. 
The absurdity and the meanness of form- 



84 SELECTION II. 

alism will here be seen. Let the depra- 
vity of men be remembered, and the doctrine 
of regeneration by the Spirit of God — with- 
out which no good fruit ever was, or ever 
will be, produced. Let us consider these as 
eternal truths, to which we must conform, 
since they never can conform to us. And in 
view of all this, let us trust in the strength of 
God and devote the rest of our days to the 
production of that good fruit which God will 
bless ! 

The passage may be considered as epito- 
mizing and symbolizing, under an appropri- 
ate and affecting, yet familiar figure, the 
whole of the dispensation of the gospel. It 
may thus enable us to see our true relations 
to God, and so to order our conversation 
aright that he will show unto us the salvation 
of God. Its great importance in this light, 
will vindicate the space we have here assign- 
ed to its consideration. 



SELECTION III. 

THE SINGLE EYE AND ITS OPPOSITE 

Mat. 6 : 22, 23. The light of the body is 
the eye : if therefore thine eye be single, thy 
ivhole body shall be full of light. But if 
thine eye be evil, thy whole body shall be full 
of darkness. If therefore the light that is in 
thee be darkness, how great is that darknesss ! 

In the last sentence, the word that is a 
gloss and an invention of the translators. 
The exclamation should be — hoiv great is the 
darkness ! The Savior refers not to the kind 
or quality of the darkness, whatever it be ; 
but to its quantity, its totality, its density and 
perfection. Hence there is no propriety in 
speaking of that darkness, as if he would 
distinguish it from some other kind of dark- 
ness or class of delusions. Besides, in the 
original there is no that, nor any place for it. 

The natural light of man is that of his rea- 
son, conscience, and other attributes of the 
soul. If this however is perverted and in ef- 



86 SELECTION III. 

feet extinguished, his mind is as totally devoid 
of its appropriate light as the body when 
both the eyes of natural vision are destroyed. 
Then how great is the darkness ! 

Man needs the light of revelation ; and 
when his eye is single, that is, when his mo- 
tive is right, he will acknowledge it, and 
obey the gospel He will be patient, careful, 
scrupulous, teachable, prayerful. When 
however it is otherwise, " with the talents of 
an angel, a man may be a fool. If he judg- 
es amiss in the supreme point, judging aright 
in all else but aggravates his folly, as it 
shows him wrong, though blessed with the 
best capacity for being right." 



SELECTION IV. 

CHARITY, CHARITABLE, CHARITABLY 

The word charity, with its adverb in one 
instance supplying less properly its place, 
occurs in our version of the New Testament 
more than a score of times. The instances 
are just twenty-two. And what does the 
word mean, according to the mind of the 
Spirit ; what, in the native sense of divine 
inspiration ? In the Old Testament it is not 
found. 

There were once two related persons, both 
violent ecclesiastical partisans, inexperienced 
in the main, but all for bold and thorough 
measures, and tenacious alike of the same 
partisan interest. Their way of doing things 
however was very different. One was bold, 
aggressive, tumultuary, and full of defiance ; 
the other, oily, insinuating, urbane, and chari- 
table as Jesuitism personified. that the for- 
mer, said one of the injured party to his 



88 SELECTION IV. 

friend, were like the latter, so mild, so calm, 
so condescending, so lovely ! That friend 
rejoined ; I cannot say, amen, to your wish. 
Give me the former, for an enemy, or for a 
theme of eulogy. What if he is furious as 
Ajax; he is also honest. He displays the 
black flag at his mast head, and then sails 
into you, with the boldness of an accomplished 
pirate. The other smiles and smites unseen. 
With one you know what to anticipate ; for 
he hangs out no false signals, and at all 
events you neither trust him, nor expect other 
than you receive. The other shows the friend 
and acts the foe; concealing his own designs 
and movements, he will never challenge, but 
only stab you in a confiding hour under the 
fifth rib. The one is simplicity and transpa- 
rency; the other, duplicity and ambuscade. 
The false hierarchy of Rome are described in 
the apocalypse, as another beast coining up 
out of the earth ; and he had two horns like 
a lamb, and he spake as a dragon. We 
should execrate the dragon-monster less, if 
his outward dress like a lamb were not as- 
sumed to disguise his real character. He 
must put on the costume of charity, in order 



CHARITY, CHARITABLE, CHARITABLY S9 

to practise more potently the orgies of his 
selfishness and his malevolence. 

The original of the word charity, ayaTty, 
is rendered love in four-fifths of the instances, 
about one hundred and twenty, of its occur- 
rence in the New Testament. that it had 
never been rendered otherwise than love in 
any place ! Then had it been genuinely 
transmitted, from the very words which the 
Holy Ghost teacheth. Then had it been in- 
telligible to all readers, according to the 
truth as it is in Jesus. On this account 
solely, we could wish that the w T ord charity 
had never come into our English Bible ! We 
could desire its extermination, and the substi- 
tution every where of the word love in the 
Book of God. Is it any man's interest, more 
than his duty, to be deceived 1 Why should 
I think of things in heaven as they are not ? 
What good can I get by imaginations of 
falsehood and delusion ? what a world is 
this of errorists who hate the light! The 
truth remains unchangeable. 

The thing meant by the word is as impor- 
tant as the substance of all genuine piety. 
Such is love. On earth and in heaven, it is 



90 SELECTION IV. 

the whole of moral excellence. It is the 
virtue of virtues in saints and in angels ; nay, 
it is the sum of his moral glory in God him- 
self. God is love. It is alike in nature 
whether in us or in him. We are renewed 
in his image ; because as He is, so are we in 
this world. Hence love is the end of the 
commandment, the fulfilling of the law, the 
bond of perfectness. It is the substance of 
all the graces, the soul of all acceptable wor- 
ship, the motive of all true service; and 
piety without it as a carcass of hypocrisy. 
It may be formalism. It may take the mil- 
lion. It may have a show of wisdom, in will- 
worship and humility : but it is not godliness. 
It may suit party-spirit, in its short-lived and 
partial views of policy. It may please pre- 
lacy, with its false and arrogant preten- 
sions ; Oxfordism, with its sophistry and 
its showy ceremonial ; and Rome, the mother 
of both these, with all the golden cup of her 
abominations. But it will not suit Heaven. 
It will not please God. Without love I am 
nothing. 

There are two meanings, either of which 
is frequently attributed to the word charity, 



CHARITY, CHARITABLE, CHARITABLY 91 

in a religious relation ; and which, common 
as they are, are eminently delusive and false. 
The word in the sacred oracles, has no such 
meaning as that attributed ; from which the 
true sense is often set in direct separation and 
solemnly contradistinguished. These two false 
meanings are not merely points of mistake and 
speculative error. They are morally evil, 
both in their causes and their consequences. 
Men would not adopt or prefer them, if they 
loved the truth as they ought ; and having 
adopted them, and aided in giving currency 
to the counterfeits, they are endangered and 
cheated themselves with their baseness ; 
while, spreading, they infect every where 
the moral atmosphere and so poison the breath 
of all by whom it is inhaled. 

But we proceed to state these two popular 
and pernicious errors, in regard to the mean- 
ing of the word charity, and to show what 
they are. 

1. In reference to alms-giving and pecu- 
niary munificence, it consists in pitying the 
poor so as to give them what they seem to 
require, in food, or clothing, or money, or 
other valuables for the present life. Or, it 



92 SELECTION IV. 

consists in giving them tracts, or bibles, or 
lodgings in hospitals, or whatever they main- 
ly need ; or contributing largely for their 
temporal or spiritual good, either directly 
meeting their petitions, or virtually, by as- 
sisting in the foundation and support of some 
charitable institutions, that aim to benefit 
their bodies or their souls. 

All these outward charities, as they are call- 
ed, are, we doubt not, less or more, the fruits 
of Christianity ; since they are found in com- 
parative frequency and usefulness in Christian 
countries alone ; and are then most excellent, 
as well as abundant, where the influence of 
Christianity is realized in greatest purity and 
profusion. But the fruits of Christianity are 
not its vital principle, more than the fruit of 
a tree is identified w T ith the generous circu- 
lating sap that nourished and produced it. 
These outward things are not love ; and are 
often not identified with it, or even allied to 
it, in the motives of their performers and pa- 
trons. A principle of abhorred self-righteous- 
ness, or the love of human praise and fame, 
or the spirit of ostentation, or merely wordly 
considerations of utility and benefit, or the na- 



CHARITY, CHARITABLE, CHARITABLY 93 

tural temperament, or some expected pecu- 
niary profit even, may stealthily or otherwise 
occupy a man and influence all his subserviency 
to them. Sometimes the motive is worse. 
Emulation, rivalry, pride, and party-spirit, 
may often be the spring of a thousand actions 
and achievements, good in their character, 
useful in their influence, and as such even 
overruled and blessed of God. Who knows 
not that spite, and schism, and party-spirit, 
can build churches, and even preach with 
vehemence an ultra-doctrinal orthodoxy ? 
The Reformation was an immense blessing to 
Great Britain, and so to this country, to pos- 
terity and human nature, from the time of its 
first introduction into that kingdom ; but 
their very graceless king, Henry VIII. w T hen 
his sword of Csesar forced its entrance, and 
coerced to its sway the popish adhesiveness 
of the Bishops, was not therefore actuated by 
charity. All such doings of outward bene- 
ficence may or may not be good in the end, 
as they seem in their tendency, to the true 
interests of men. But the motive that pro- 
duced them is the great question in the sight 
of God. And if that motive is wrong, it 



94 SELECTION IV. 

will be no benefit to the doer or the helper of 
them, that they were overruled for benefit to 
others. 

2. The other error of religious aspects 
and relations, to which we refer, respecting 
the popular use of the word charity, is that 
which makes it to consist in thinking favora- 
bly of all kinds of errorists, viewing them as 
Christians, if they are only " sincere ;" how- 
ever erroneous, and even if they deny the 
Lord that bought them, bringing upon them- 
selves swift destruction : still, one must think 
well of them, or he is not charitable, he has 
no charity, he is no Christian. And this 
charity has no limits. It is indefinite and 
silly. 

There is such a thing as truth, apart from 
our perception of it ; even as the reality of 
light in the natural world is not dependent, 
for its being or its beauty, on the sight or the 
eye of any man, certainly not of the blind. 
It is one thing to believe a proposition, and 
quite another for that proposition to be true. 
Else there could be no such thing as delusion 
in the world ; or delusion, if it existed, must 
be always safe, always innocent. There is 



CHARITY, CHARITABLE, CHARITABLY Ob 

no book in the world which speaks so much of 
the truth as the Bible. None, that makes so 
much of it. It is that in which piety exults 
and glorieSe Charity rejoiceth in the truth. 
And the truth, in that abstract and compre- 
hensive sense in which the scriptures use it, 
is the symbol and representative of things. 
It may be denned — That doctrine of God> 

CONCERNING ALL THE OBJECTS OF RELIGION AND 
ALL THE THINGS OF HIS KINGDOM, W 7 HICH REPRE- 
SENTS THEM, INTRINSICALLY OR RELATIVELY, 

just as they are. In this respect then, the 
things that are unseen and eternal, are analo- 
gous, or exactly related, to those that are 
seen and temporal* The truth in either case 
is that which represents them as they are. 
They pre-exist as independent of the truth 
that makes them manifest, independent of 
our perceptions of them before or after the 
manifestation. The truth, as to the pleasant 
climates of South America, or the roaring 
horrors of an eruption of Vesuvius, or the 
loud f live thunder' as it ' leaps' from the 
moving avalanche in Switzerland, the truth 
in relation to these things is that which repre- 
sents them as they are. It is just as true, when 



96 SELECTION IV. 

disbelieved, or neglected, or unknown, as 
when understood, and felt, and fully trusted. 
It is not the truth that makes the things, it 
only represents them. The truth is strong 
and incomparable, only because it alone 
manifests them as they are. And if we can- 
not see and witness the things ourselves, and 
yet it is important that we should know them 
and regulate our conduct according to them, 
then we are wholly dependent on the truth, and 
must see them in the truth, or wholly forego 
their knowledge with all its consequent bene- 
fits and advantages. Hence it is not the 
truth of revelation respecting heaven or hell, 
that gives reality or being to those invisible 
localities, or to the relations we sustain to 
them. They exist as realities whether we 
know them or not, whether we believe them 
or not, whether we are favorably or unfavor- 
ably related to their awful importance. 

In reference to things seen and temporal, 
it is a law, we know, of providence, that our 
opinions about them can neither change their 
nature nor at all effect it. If one takes poi- 
son for food, under a delusion of its nature, 
he dies ; since his perception of it as it was 



CHARITY, CHARITABLE, CHARITABLY 97 

not, neither alters its nature, nor, ' sincere' as 
he may be, secures him from its mortal ef- 
fects. Sincerity is one thing, rectitude is 
another. We may sincerely misconceive a 
thing, by anticipating, or perverting, or con- 
tradicting, evidence ; and then our sincerity 
will neither make the thing different, nor 
exempt us from the damage that may ensue, 
nor excuse us for one error at the tribunal of 
God. If we had evidence of the thing as it 
is, and failed for any guilty cause to appre- 
ciate it, our sincerity may be both the offspring 
and the substance of our sin. Said our Savior 
to his disciples, the time cometh, that whosoever 
kilkili you will think that he doeth God ser- 
vice. Of this class of sincere persecutors 
was Saul of Tarsus. In his noble answer 
before Agrippa he ingenuously confesses at 
once his sincerity and his sin. I verily 

THOUGHT WITH MYSELF, THAT I OUGHT TO DO 

many things contrary to the name of Jesus of 
Nazareth : which thing I also did in Jerusa- 
lem. And many of the saints did I shut up 
in prison, having received authority from the 
chief priests ; and when they were put to 
death, I gave my voice against them. And 



98 SELECTION IV. 

/ punished them oft in every synagogue, and 
compelled them to blaspheme ; and being ex- 
ceedingly mad against them, I persecuted 
them even into strange cities. He was a great 

exscinder but not after his conversion. 

Here was a man, who, in an evil and an 
impious course, with full sincerity, thought 
himself to be religiously right, as the servant 
of God ; and this, when persecuting Christ 
in his members, and breathing out threaten- 
ings and slaughter against the disciples of the 
Lord. He was wrong, and he ought to have 
known it. It was a sin of ignorance, be- 
cause he knew not the right way ; but it was 
distinguished sin, notwithstanding, because 
he might have known better. His ignorance 
was his sin and so was his sincerity. He 
had the means of knowledge, but his pre- 
sumption would rather anticipate than use 
them. But I obtained mercy, because I did it 
ignorantly in unbelief Howbeit for this 
cause I obtained mercy, that in me first 
[chief, that is, with eminence and distinction] 
Jesus Christ might show forth all long suf- 
fering, for a pattern to those who should here- 
after believe on him to life everlasting. 



CHARITY, CHARITABLE, CHARITABLY 99 

Now, charity is love ; and love is an exer- 
cise of the mind, in which, according to the 
law of God, we breathe good will or benevo- 
lence towards the persons of all men, while 
we delight only in what is right. Must 
we then contradict evidence, or deceive 
ourselves, to think better of a man than he is 
manifested to be ? Ought we to aid his self- 
deception ? Nay, is it not an office of love 
itself to show him the truth, to endeavor his 
correction, and to influence him to come cor- 
dially to the knowledge of God and of himself ? 
That all men are by nature voluntary trans- 
gressors of the law of God, so that there is none 
that doeth good,no, not one ; that regeneration 
or a radical change of heart is indispensable to 
salvation, as it is also indispensable to all 
genuine piety and all true virtue ; that there 
are certain plain, and ordinarily discernible 
evidences of this great moral change, where- 
ever it actually exists ; and that ignorance 
of God, indifference to his cause, superficial 
and light views of religion, vain and airy 
sentiments of piety, changeful predilections 
and fastidious feelings in regard to it, and 
above all, the presence of positive error, 



100 -ELECTION IV. 

menacing sometimes the very basis of the 
glorious gospel of the blessed God, that these 
are respectively or collectively no evidences 
of regeneration, which is the ultimate bound 
of the circle, which in the sight of God in- 
cludes all Christians ; all these are palpable 
scriptural facts, reasonable, cardinal, capable 
of the clearest proof, and denied only by men 
of corrupt minds, reprobate concerning the 
faith. Yet if one holds them, he is not 
charitable ! He must contradict God, in or- 
der to show charity to men ! 

Why not rather have some charity for 
God ? Why not do him the merest piece 
of justice, in the world, to believe his word ? 
It is impossible for God to lie. He cannot 
deny himself Yea, let God be true, but every 
man a liar. The foolishness of God is wiser 
than men. Heaven and earth shall pass 
away, but my words shall not pass away. 
Shall he that contendeth with the Jllmighty 
instruct him 1 He that reproveth God, let 
him answer it. Lo, they have rejected the 
word of the Lord, and what wisdom is in 
them? What shall be the adequate suc- 
cedaneum for the truth ? 



CHARITY, CHARITABLE, CHARITABLY 101 

These two errors, an indiscriminate confi- 
dence in all religious professors or pretenders, 
and an outward beneficence or usefulness ir- 
respective of the motive, as ordinarily cover- 
ed by the nominal guise of charity, are then 
absurdities and fallacies, for which Scripture 
is not accountable and which belong to 
Christianity only as perversely does any 
other of its humanizing corruptions. Chari- 
ty, that is love, rejoiceth in the truth. If so, 
charity has eyes ; and makes discriminations, 
as well as inferences. And though I bestow 
all my goods to feed the poor, and though I 
give my body to be burned, and have not cha- 
rity — have not love, it profiteth me nothing. 
Charity then is another thing than such sac- 
rifices for the poor, another thing than burn- 
ing at the stake like a martyr ; since a man 
may do all this, or any other outward ser- 
vice, near the altars of God or in the deserts 
of the world, and yet have no charity, no 
love. 

The distinction of genuine love as two- 
fold, that of benevolence and that of compla- 
cency, is sound, philosophical, eternal. The 
object of the former is being, in all the par- 



102 SELKCTIOM IV. 

ticulars or individuals of our knowledge, our 
social relations, and our personal intercourse, 
We love their happiness, we wish well to 
their persons, we care for their interests; 
that is, we regard them sincerely with the 
love of benevolence ; and this, even when 
they are unworthy and sinful. 

The object of the latter is truth and ex- 
cellence, or whatever is properly the object 
of approbation, desire, delight. Hence, we 
regard with the love of complacency all the 
moral perfections of God, and whatever in 
creatures resembles them by conformity or 
affinity. But we can take, if we are right, 
no complacency in what is wrong, none in 
error, none in sin, none in folly. How spu- 
rious and vicious that charity that does not 
abhor what is evil ! Complacency regards 
character with delight, so far as it is good. 
Benevolence desires the happiness of persons, 
their best and their ultimate happiness, even 
when, on account of sin, they can be no ob- 
jects at all of complacency. And to exercise 
complacency and benevolence on all objects 
respectively proper, is to exemplify a cha- 
racter well disciplined, as well as truly en- 



CHARITY, CHARITABLE, CHARITABLY 103 

lightened and rightly charitable. This, we 
take it, is the main thought of the Apostle in 
his excellent prayer for his Phillippian con- 
verts ; And this I pray, that your love 
may abound yet more and more, in knowledge 
and in all judgment ; that ye may approve 

[DISCRIMINATE] THINGS THAT ARE EXCELLENT; 

that ye may he sincere and without offence 
till the day of Christ ; being filled with the 
fruits of righteousness, which are by Jesus 
Christ to the glory and praise of God. 

In closing this chapter, we venture the re- 
mark of the great importance of substituting 
the word love for charity wherever the lat- 
ter occurs ; and that for want of this change 
in our English version, thousands and mil- 
lions have been led to mistake the nature of 
the thing intended by the term ; and so led 
to misconceive grandly the nature of piety ^ 
and quite too probably to rest in a false 
peace and an alienated practice, to the final 
undoing of their souls. We repeat the re- 
mark that the word charity ought to be su- 
perseded by the word love, wherever the 
former occurs in the New Testament. The 
former is ambiguous, generic, illusory. And 



104< SELECTION IV. 

the mass of readers are wont to take, and 
practically to prefer, the wrong sense to the 
right one — or some one of the inferior senses 
to that which is alone right, as it is also su- 
perior and incomparable. The word love, 
on the other hand, is intelligible, definite, 
spiritual, genuine. It is moreover the only 
correct translation of the original ayanrj ; nor 
can we conceive what reason influenced the 
translators of King James, on a principle ap- 
parently arbitrary and reasonless, to render 
the word right and proper in four fifths of 
the instances of its occurrence, and then to 
give, to the remaining fifth, a vocable so di- 
luent and tame, for its improper representa- 
tive in English. Nor can the word be con- 
sidered of small importance which expresses 
the whole of the moral attributes of God, the 
sum and substance of all moral excellence and 
true piety in man. Perhaps the semi-popery 
of the age, and the romanizing idea of char- 
ity, may best account for the rendering we 
blame, and which in the times of the Tudors, 
and even of the Stuarts, as indeed in our own 
times, does so great an injury to souls, as it 
so darkens and attenuates the nature of piety. 



SELECTION V. 
THE GOSPEL HID 

2 Cor. 4 : 3, 4. But if our gospel be hid, 
it is hid to them that are lost : in whom the 
God of this world hath blinded the minds of 
them that believe not, lest the light of the glo- 
rious gospel of Christ, vjho is the image of 
God, should shine unto them. 

There seems some difficulty in this text. 
To them that are lost — how lost ? In an- 
swering this question there appears to be a 
mistake somewhere with all commentators 
and all preachers, who undertake its elucida- 
tion. Men may be said to be lost in three 
ways ; as sinners in general, as abandoned 
of God, and as imprisoned in hell. 

1. In the first sense, we are all lost, as fallen 
and apostate, as condemned and obnoxious, 
as incapable in any sense of making an 
atonement or of dispensing with that of 
Christ, as ill deserving and salvable by the 
unsearchable riches of Christ alone. As such 
10 



106 SELECTION V. 

only are any of us the appropriate objects of 
the mission and the passion of the Redeemer ; 
For the son of man is come to seek and to 
save that which was lost. 

2. As abandoned of God, men are empha- 
tically lost. If thou hadst known, even thou, 
at least in this thy day, the things which belong 
unto thy peace ! but now they are hid from 
thine eyes.' — Yea, wo also to them when I de- 
part from them! There is such a state, and 
many are now in it. They are left to them- 
selves and they will perish forever. 

3. Men are lost consummately and finally, 
when, ceasing to be prisoners of hope as or- 
dinarily in this world, they become prisoners 
of despair in that which is to come. 

Now, in which of these three senses — for 
we know not of a fourth — refers the text to 
them that are lost ? not in the third sense, 
certainly : for they live on the earth. 

Is it then to the second 1 we think not : 
for all men are mainly blinded, in different 
degrees and forms, before they are regenerat- 
ed, as we all know. Those who commonly 
assume this second sense of the word lost, 
are wont to contradict themselves aw T kward- 



THE GOSPEL HID 107 

ly, in the application, they make to the un- 
godly and the blinded, as if they might be 
encouraged to look and live. What ! when 
abandoned of God ? If they might, then are 
they not abandoned. And what preacher 
has not either exemplified this inconsistency 
so as to have it seen or felt by others, or so 
as to be conscious of perpetrating some con- 
straint upon the truth himself. 

Well, is it in the first sense of the word 
lost, that we are to take the apostle ? Is it 
as sinners in general, that he refers to the 
lost ? We answer, no, in no wise. For 
there is an emphasis in the words of our ver- 
sion, which that idea does not reach, and 
without which there appears to be next to 
no sense in the words of the apostle. And 
who is farther than Paul, we should say, 
than God, from the tame, the vague, the 
vapid, or the unphilosophical, in the style of 
his inculcations ! 

- We prefer a different translation, or rather 
we prefer either one of two others, to that of 
our common version ; as more according to 
the grammar of the original, the scope of the 
passage, the truth of things, the common 



108 SELECTION V. 

sense of hearers, and the ends of preaching. 
For this however we must refer briefly to the 
context, as well as to the original ; from 
verse twelfth of the previous chapter. 

Paul is here speaking of the evangelical 
ministry, and contrasting it, favorably and 
honorably with that of Moses, who put a veil 
over his face, as the symbol of the compara- 
tive darkness of that preliminary and shadowy 
dispensation. He shows too that there is 
another and a worse veil on the hearts of the 
poor Israelites even unto this day, when Moses 
is read ; which veil is done away in Christ. 
Christianity is ultimate and substantive, 
showing the things themselves which previ- 
ous dispensations typified with comparative 
obscurity, if not ambiguity or vagueness. 
Accordingly, the Christian ministry, are wont 
to radiate a full reflection of Christ on the 
minds of men. They use great plainness of 
speech ; that is, they are intelligible, perspic- 
uous, full and clear, neither deal they in 
fraud, or duplicity, or equivocation, or con- 
cealment, of any sort ; but honestly and sin- 
cerely, by manifestation of the truth, com- 
mending themselves to every man's conscience 
in the sight of God. 



THE GOSPEL HID 109 

And what, must we think, is the conse- 
quence ? Certainly, that all men see the light 
and rejoice in it, in accordance with the ful- 
ness of its objective manifestations. But 
alas ! such is not the fact. The gospel is 
still hid to many, and was even when Paul, 
or Apollos, or Cephas, or John, was the 
competent and faithful preacher. What is 
the reason ? The text is properly introduced 
to show the reason ; and we give it here in 
the dress of its paraphrased 

FIRST TRANSLATION. 

If however the veil is found on the gospel, 
notwithstanding, I will show you how it 
comes there ; it is veiled by means of perish- 
able things allowed to intervene, by which 
things the god of this world hath blinded 
the perceptions of the unbelieving, so that 
the radiation of the glorious gospel of Christ, 
who is the image of God, might not illumine 
them. 

The word rendered hid in our version, is 
veiled, xexalviiuevov ; and the allusion is so 
continuous, and so identical, to what he had just 
said about the veil, on the face of Moses, that 
plainly it is a pity the word hid was ever put 
10* 



110 SELECTION V. 

there, by which the figure is rendered invisi- 
ble and the sense is hid unnecessarily and in- 
juriously. We must think of the gospel as 
pouring a flood of light on the earth ; and 
then of a veil interposed ; and that veil con- 
stituted or woven of things that perish — just 
such things as palpably absorb the minds of 
millions, where the gospel is by them neg- 
lected rather than scorned, every day. 
Wealth, pleasure, fame, are the trinity, says 
Dr. Griffin, of the world's adoration ; and 
while these occupy the mind, they make a 
veil opaque that puts the sun of righteous- 
ness itself relatively under a total eclipse. 
They cannot see God, or duty, or the way of 
life, or the beauty of evangelical truth, or the 
excellency of things divine, or the necessity 
of flying from the wrath w r hich is to come, or 
rightly any other doctrine of revelation. 

We have heard an anecdote in point. It 
is said the late eloquent and excellent Robert 
Hall, was once engaged in conversation with 
two intelligent men, one of whom was not, 
and the other was, a Christian. Their topic 
was piety ; and with the Jatter he was ever 
at an agreement, but with the former, not, 



THE GOSPEL HIP 111 

who was a money-driving merchant. When- 
ever Mr. Hall arrived in his reasonings 
at a conclusion implying the criminality of 
unbelief, his unconverted friend objected ; 
6 No, sir. I can't see it; I doubt that, sir ; 
how can it be ? That strikes me as not so 
clear/ and the like ; till Mr. Hall, justly in- 
dignant at the real prevarication, and willing 
to make a special effort to convince him that 
the difficulty was all of his own making, in- 
terposed in an extraordinary way. He took 
from his pocket his pencil and a gold sove- 
reign ; then he wrote GODon his thumb- 
nail ; c There, my friend, 5 said he, ' can 
you see that V ' O yes/ he rejoined. Mr. 
Hall then put the coin over it, and it was 
completely hid ; interrogating him, c Can 
you see it now, sir V c No, certainly, 5 was 
the answer. Mr. Hall replied, 'Well, my 
friend, the fact is as you say. But do you 
know the reason ? It is the same here and 
in higher relations. Remember then — when 
you cannot see God, it is because gold is in 
the way. 5 He then left him to digest the ap- 
plication with his own conscience. 

The words translated to them that are lost 



112 SELECTION V. 

are ev jovg artollvfueroi;, and they may gram- 
matically refer to persons, places, or things. In 
the first translation they are referred to things : 
— the things that perish make the veil, that 
hides the gospel and blinds the perceptions of 
the faithless. This is surely grammar, sense, 
and truth ; even if possibly it be not the native 
meaning, identically and to a shade, of the 
original. If our version however were the 
true, it would better accord with the Greek, 
if the preposition ev were omitted, and the 
dative absolute conjoined with the verb hid 
or veiled ; of this w T e have an example in 
1 Cor. 1 : 18, where the same word is so 
used. For the preaching of the cross is to 
them that perish, foolishness ; but unto us 
who are saved it is the power of God. Here 
those that perish and those that are saved are 
both expressed absolutely in the dative plural ; 
and the preposition there would be as much in 
our way, as it is now, awkwardly enough for 
the common version, in the passage we are 
considering. But if the preposition is to be 
recognised in the translation, and if the partici- 
ple refers to things instead of persons, then 



THE GOSPEL HID 113 

our first translation is the true one beyond all 
candid and lucid dispute. 

But some may prudentially prefer the per- 
sonal view ; and while we do not prefer it, 
we admit that possibly it may be the right 
view: let the intelligent reader judge for 
himself. We give then, literally, 

THE SECOND TRANSLATION. 

If notwithstanding the gospel we preach be 
veiled, it is veiled in them that perish ; in 
whom the god of this world hath blinded the 
perceptions of the unbelieving, so that the 
radiation of the glorious gospel of Christ, 
who is the image of God, might not illu- 
mine them. 

We prefer the former, as more natural, 
more congruous with the figure, more com- 
plete, more descriptive of the way of it, more 
useful and convincing, and perhaps more ex- 
cellent in all relations. The words sv tovc, bv 
c oig, may refer to things, as well as persons, 
every scholar knows. The examples are 
many. 

The phrase the God of this world is peculiar 
and even unique. Our Savior says twice 
the prince of this world, John, 14 : 30. 16 : 11. 



114 SELECTION V. 

But here the words are entirely different ; 
6 (XQ/wr iov 'aou^iov tovtou, while in the text 
alone it is, 6 Oeog iov uiujvog Tovrov. The 
latter might be rendered the God of this age 
or this state of things, as contradistinguished 
from eternity. And here the phrase may be 
interpreted in a two-fold way; not theologi- 
cally opposed or inconsistent ; but to be 
compared with enlightened choice in the 
manifestation of the truth to every marts con- 
science in the sight of God. 

It may refer personally and formally to 
the devil ; since he is now enthroned morally 
by the rebels, the apostates, that populate and 
constitute the world, the age, and the charac- 
ter of this present state. In this sense, it is 
used as our Master uses the 'prince of this 
world ; and as the grand adversary is else- 
where described, as the Dragon, that Old 
Serpent, who is the devil and Satan, who de- 
ceiveth the whole world. 

The other sense is that of this world wor- 
shipped as God, or put in the place of God, 
by being supremely loved, and served, and 
sought, in all things. And what is more 
common ? or what would better carry out the 



THE GOSPEL HID 115 

figure ? If a gold sovereign, when put near 
the eye, may veil the universe from our sight, 
surely the world interposed may eclipse the 
sun and darken the minds of those who dwell 
voluntarily in its shadow. As professors of 
Christianity, we are morally married to God ; 
and he, as our husband, claims of us the rights 
of conjugal fidelity and cordial attachment. 
He accordingly resents our spiritual infidelities 
in a way of holy and indignant reprehension ; 
Ye adulterers and adulteresses, know ye not 
that the friendship of the world is enmity 
with God? Whosoever therefore will be a 
friend of the world is the enemy of God. 
We conclude with the specimen of 

A THIRD TRANSLATION. 

But if our gospel be veiled, it is veiled by the 
things that perish ; by which things, this world, 
worshipped in place of God, hath blinded the 
perceptions of the faithless, so that the radia- 
tion of the glorious gospel of Christ, who is 
the image of God, might not enlighten them. 



SELECTION VI. 

TAKING THEM WITH GUILE 

The difference between the true rendering 
of the text, and the false and common view of 
it, is very great; as great as that between 
a Jesuit, who practises on the principle that 
' the end sanctifies the means ;' or that ' it is 
lawful to do evil that good may come, 5 or 
that pious frauds are the most pious things in 
Christendom, and a minister of Christ who 
copies the holiness of his master. We quote — 

2. Cor. 12 : 16. But be it so, J did not bur- 
den you ; nevertheless, being crafty, I caught 
you with guile. 

The Apostle is here using the language of 
his enemies. As if he had said, " I know 
what the false teachers say of me at Corinth. 
They accuse me of cunning, and management, 
and fraudulent duplicity. They say I sordid- 
ly cheated you. But you, my friends, know 



TAKING THEM WITH GUILE 117 

better than to believe them. Did I ever any 
thing like this ? Did I make a gain of you 
in person, or by any of them whom I sent unto 
you ? / desired Titus, and with him I sent a 
brother. Did Titus make a gain of you^ 
any more than I did ? Nay, walked we not 
in the same spirit 1 walked we not in the same 
steps ? Wherefore, let a calumny so impious 
be treated by you as it plainly deserves. For 
you all know that guile had nothing to do 
with my personal or official action among 
you." 

Often has the writer been afflicted, some- 
times in high places, to see ministers of Christ, 
and even Doctors in Divinity, mistaking this 
text, and using their blunder to sanction their 
own double-dealing. No names are to be 
mentioned, only the truth shall be manifested. 
But there is one passage of history, so me- 
morable, so apposite, and so true, and which 
the writer is competent to attest as a veritable 
as well as an instructive fact, that he ventures 
thus to illustrate his theme w 7 ith its narration. 

A company of clerical friends were once 
dining in London, some of them names of 
distinction ; say ten or twelve of the metro- 
11 



1 18 SELECTION VI. 

polis, and three or four others from the United 
States of America. Towards the end of the 
friendly and well enjoyed banquet, the con- 
versation turned on the appropriate qualities 
of the ministry, British and American. The 
comparisons w T ere not odious ; but generous 
rather, philosophical, and intended mainly for 
information and mutual improvement. 

At last a London minister, who had traveled 
and seen something of the world, remarked, 
as follows : 

1 With all their excellencies, however, they 
have also their defects in America. There is 
one which I am disposed to mention as rather 
distinguished. Our American friends will, I 
trust, receive it kindly, and entertain it with 
their characteristic magnanimity.' 

Here the Americans looked at each other, 
waiting for the thunder of an accusation 
which no one could particularly anticipate ; 
and it was ail the more embarrassing to the 
entire circle, from the form and gravity of its 
introduction, the mutual cordiality that pre- 
ceded, and the blind apprehension alike of all 
the auditory. The speaker continued : 

' I scarcely know what to call the quality 



TAKING THEM WITH GUILE 119 

I am about to censure ; but truly I view it as 
the great characteristic fault of your Ameri- 
can preachers. And I think as truly, that, in 
its opposite, the London ministry as much ex- 
cel. Instead however of naming our quality, 
or their defect as not possessing it, I will de- 
scribe it in a legitimate way ; by citing the 
example of the very chief est of the Apostles. 
Paul is our paragon, and at Corinth he was a 
city minister. Writing to that church, he 
tells them, / caught you with guile. Now, 
that management, that address, that pruden- 
tial manner of administration, to which the 
Apostle refers, is the identical quality, I think, 
in which we London ministers excel, and 
which you American ministers distinguishing- 
ly want. 5 

' You are really in earnest then, my friend/ 
replied an American at the table. 

' certainly,' was the answer. * I mean 
just as I speak, 9 

' Let us glance then,' continued the Ameri- 
can, ' at the matter. Did you ever look at 
the original word there rendered guile 1 You 
surely know that dolos means fraud, dis- 
honesty, cheating ; that it is used in the New 



J 4 20 ELECTION VI. 

Testament often, but never in a good sense ; 
that it is incapable of a good sense, as really 
as diabolos* with which indeed its significa- 
tion is allied ; that its possession is incongru- 
ous to the character of an Israelite indeed, as 
says our blessed Savior himself' — 

' Hold ! my dear friend,' exclaimed the 
Londoner, c you will condemn the Apostle 
Paul. 5 

' no V rejoined the American, rehearsing 
the text ironically, as Paul used it, and mak- 
ing its sense appear to the conviction of all. 
The London accuser blushed at his own sig- 
nal defeat ; when the learned and Reverend 

Professor H of the London University, 

took up the topic, substantially as follows : 
For shame, London ! It is high time for us to 
renounce the hidden things of dishonesty and 
'guile ;' not walking in craftiness, nor hand- 
ling the word of God deceitfully ; but by mani- 
festation of the truth imitate our American 
brethren, commending ourselves to every man's 
conscience in the sight of God. For one, I 
thank you for correcting our mistake. So I 
see that, among other odd practices, you have 

* Devil. 



TAKIJNG THEM WITH GMJ1LE 121 

one, of which we London ministers are all 
too clear 3 that of consulting and actually 
studying your Greek Testament. Stick to 
that, sirs, and your example will be increas- 
ingly excellent You will correct London 
ministers and all the world beside. Away 
henceforth with dolos, diabolos, and all that 
sympathy. And you, my London brother, 
you will take them, with guile, I think, no 
more ! 

Jesuitism may suit Rome, Oxford, and some 
other of the apostatical succession, whose 
tendencies are all towards Italy and the dark 
ages. But dishonesty of all kinds will never 
suit God, who is of all beings infinitely the 
most veracious and the most sincere. Hence 
how worthy is he of that confidence, w^hich 
he not more demands, than deserves from us 
all. And we are eternally how safe in it ! 
There is one sin, which, as such, is too often 
exemplified by the clergy in their ex-officio 
performances; it is the sin of misquoting 
scripture, either the words wrong, or the 
sense wrong, or the use wrong, and so the 
effect wrong, through negligence or haste or 
11* 



122 SELECTION VI. 

a vicious and indolent habit ; and sometimes 
by merely doing as others do. 

As to the London ministers generally, while 
we know, and admire, and revere, many, 
and especially some of them, and since com- 
parisons have been instituted, we may act 
Elihu and also shoio our opinion. In general 
then it is, that with all their bookishness and 
tact, with all their address and skill of man- 
ners, with all their well seen gentility and 
courteous ease, with all their real learning 
and we trust, real piety, they do not under- 
stand their Bibles better than the evangelical 
ministry of America, nor preach on the whole 
as pure and full a gospel, nor impress and in- 
dividualize their hearers as powerfully, nor 
answer the great ends of preaching as well in 
arresting the attention of men to the things 
of God, or in stating and enforcing the truth, 
or in converting the sinner from the error of 
his ways* 

We suppose that they less understand the 
pure theology of the word of God ; are less 
thorough, orderly, symmetrical, and methodi- 
cal, in their intelligence of the revealed sys- 
tem ; and this we say of the evangelical 



TAKING THEM WITH GUILE 123 

ministry of the metropolis and of the whole 
Island, apart from the church of England, 
not without recollecting exceptions and sup- 
posing more that we do not recollect. As 
for the church of England as a body, w r e 
verily believe, that, apart from its mound of 
political and national influence against the 
outbursts of infidelity and the plottings of 
popery, the real orthodoxy and general piety 
of the whole hierarchy, and by consequence 
of the total laity, are most marvellously over- 
rated every where. The truly pious are com- 
paratively the ignoble few, called the ' evan- 
gelical faction/ are uninfluential and scarcely 
tolerated, are not in the road to preferment, 
are the theme and the mark of sneers and 
contumely, and are like tropical plants in ar- 
tificial closures of the north, out of their pro- 
per element, of sickly and stunted growth, 
and instinctively panting for those gardens of 
paradise which they are never to re-visit in 
. this world. Instead of a thousand proofs of 
this — witness the contempt and scorn of their 
Arminian hierarchy* in general for Dr. 

* The whole numerical hierarchy of the Anglican 
Establishment is rated, by that excellent and compe- 



124 SELECTION VI. 

Scott's most excellent Commentary. Those 
perpaaci who read and love it, are generally 
too prudent to let it be known — especial- 
tent judge, the late Rev. Legh Richmond, an Episco- 
palian and one of them, at 18,000, from the Archbishop 
of Canterbury, with his salary of 370 dollars a day, 
(or $135,000 a year and more than $15 dollars every 
hour of his life,) down, by all the steps and orders of 
the clerical pyramid, supported at its base by so many 
half-starved curates, to every shadow of a clerk that 
has had the forms of ordination passed on him ; and of 
these 18,000, Mr. Richmond deliberately supposes that 
there are perhaps 1600 sincerely pious men ! What a 

ratio ! And 16,400 c But where will they find the 

1600 ? It is entirely a too liberal allowance ;' said an 
excellent London Pastor. 

Some of our countrymen, finding the pious few — a 
few of them, agreeably, in their company when abroad, 
make a charitable mistake in favor of the clergy, as if 
they were all as pious, all like them — specimens, or as 
if the rule was not rather logically confirmed by its 
rare exceptions ! As well might a man, who has eaten 
one or two comfortable meals, each in a far-selected 
oasis of the Desert of Arabia, report that the whole 
peninsula was neither Desert, nor Stony, but a perfect 
Felix of verdure and fertility, from the shores of Mare 
Mortuum to the Straits of Babel Mandel. We have 
heard ourselves the miserable preaching of Curates, 
Rectors, Bishops, without enough of evangelical truth 
communicated — or probably known by the preacher — to 
direct any poor sinner there in the way of heaven. 



TAKING THEM WITH GUILE 185 

ly to their diocesan. The pride and state 
and ambition of prelacy, its arrogance, and 
its exclusiveness, its earthliness and secu- 
larly, are pervading and ascendant; while 
Puseyism is spreading in a congenial atmos- 
phere, and inclining, like flowers towards the 

Arminianism of the most loose and flashy sort, is 
wedded to Prelacy the world over ; and then, with the 
shameful and silly falsehood of Baptismal regenera- 
tion, the popish arrogance of exclusive ( authority' re- 
sulting from the foolery of c apostolical succession,' a 
good fat salary, professional indolence, the pride of 
aristocracy, and the sense of official magistracy as 
connected — not particularly with Heaven, but — with 
the State, these earthly things, with pluralism, simony, 
ceremony, ostentatious ease, and bought sermons, illus- 
trate what Cowper and multitudes of the wise and 
good have often described them, so commonly, to be ! 
With themselves and perhaps millions of the people, 
the influence of the Establishment is blinding and 
worldly alone ; a mere political fungus on the sword 
of majesty or the sceptre of power. 

Many of their clergy utterly scout the idea of a 
change of heart as requisite to salvation ; what preach- 
ers these ! — and are viewed, by our enlightened Chris- 
tians, who know them, as mere hirelings, without the 
experience or even the sober pretence of real piety ! 
God protect this country forever, from the tender mer- 
cies of an Establishment and all that appertains to it ! 
In these times, such a prayer is opportune. 



126 SELECTION VI. 

sun, in the direction of Rome, steady and 
stealthy, as towards the glory of its rejoicing, 
the home of its affinities, and the kebla* of its 
formalism and its devotions. my soul, 
come not thou into their secret ! unto their 
assembly, mine honor, be not thou united. 
One may more and more thank God, that he 
is a protest ant, a puritan, and hopefully a 
Christian ! 

* Kebla, among the eastern nations, signifies the 
point of the heavens towards which they directed their 
worship. The Jews did it toward the Temple at Jeru- 
salem ; the Mohammedans towards Mecca; the Sa- 
bians toward the Meredian ; and the Magians toward 
the rising sun. See I Kings, 8 : 44, 48. Daniel, 6 : 
10. Ps. 5 : 7. 28 : 2. Jonah, 2 : 4. For the proper 
Kebla of Christians, see Heb. 12:2. 



SELECTION VII. 

WHAT JESUS SAYS IS TRUE 

John, 14: 2. In my fathers house are 
many mansions ; if it were not so, J would 
have told you. 

The last moiety of the text ought to be 
rendered, not as here indicatively and declara- 
tively, but interrogatively and appellantly. 
Our blessed Savior is comforting his disciples 
in near prospect of his departure, and he is 
reproving affectionately their want of steady 
and equal faith in his word. He says, Let 
not your heart be troubled. Ye believe in 
God ; believe also in me. In my father's 
house are many mansions. If it were not so, 
would I have told you ? As if he had said, 
' If it were not as I have said, would I ever 
have said it ? Would I, think you, speak 
what is not so ? Your unbelief impeaches 
your Savior's truth. Yet, think who I am. 
Is it ray way to deceive men, especially my 



128 SELECTION VII. 

own loved disciples ? Am I crafty, or do I 
attempt to take you with guile 1 My words 
are truth only ; for your safety, your wisdom, 
your consolation, then, believe them cordially ; 
and know that I am that Amen, that faithful 
and true witness, who cannot be deceived, 
and who would not deceive.' 

As it stands in our version, it is at best ob- 
scure and of difficult interpretation. It seems 
also absurd. If it were not so, I would have 
told you ; that is, if there had been nothing 
there, I should have made a full report about 
it. If there had been no mansions, no father's 
house, no place for you, I ivould have told 
you all about — nothing. As interrogatively 
rendered, the sense is clear. It is in keeping 
with the whole scope of the context. It is of 
admirable use. Grammar and sense sanc- 
tion it. 

It is on the testimony and veracity of our 
Lord Jesus Christ, that our faith, and so our 
duty, rests. All we believe of God, of man, and 
of futurity, depends on his word about them. 
We believe heaven, hell, judgment, eternity, 
the resurrection of the dead, regeneration, the 
work of Christ, the offer of mercy through 



WHAT JESUS SAYS IS TRUE 121) 

his blood, the influence of the Spirit, the name 
of the Father, and of the Son, and of the 
Holy Ghost, the divine purposes and promises, 
and all the universe of related objects, on the 
testimony of our Savior and our God. And 
whenever we may feel tempted to disbelieve 
any of the true sayings of God, let us pause — 
let us remember that Jesus is looking at us — 
that soon we shall stand at his judgment-seat 
— that he appeals to us against our unbelief, 
and in honor of his veracity, saying, If it 
were not so, would I have told you ? Would 

I HAVE TOLD YOU ? 

It is a grief and an astonishment to the 
enlightened Christian to see, as a feature of 
this mature and self-complacent age, that the 
religion of many has to do with the testimony 
of Jesus so sparingly, and that mainly or 
only at second hand. Human authority is 
preferred to divine. What great men say, 
a great many of them, a whole hemisphere 
of stars — in parliament or convocation assem- 
bled, or what councils have enacted, or tra- 
dition attested, or the fathers thought, or 
some other form of human rubbish, ancient 
or modern, piled like pyramids on pyramids 
12 



130 SELECTION VII. 

or mountains on mountains, and by which 
the gospel — no wonder — is hid, w T hat some 
stereotyped oracles of legitimate idolatry have 
told us, is all the rule, and all the piety, and 
all the glory of thousands ! While, what 
Jesus has told us is reverently honored with a 
bow of the head, at a safe distance, and left 
serenely to the faith of those bewildered men, 
who follow him alone, and are so out of 
' the church, 5 and abandoned by its downy 
doctors to all the damnation of ' uncovenanted 
mercies.' 



SELECTION VIIL 

PURGING ALL MEATS 

Mark, 7: 19. Because it enter eth not into 
his heart, but into the belly, and goeth out into 
the draught, purging all meats. 

The sense of the latter clause is certainly 
obscure, if we may judge from the variety of 
glosses that have been put on it by learned 
and distinguished men. We propose a safe 
and easy rendering, by some supplemental 
words, from the conviction that the phrase is 
elliptical and consequently requires them. 
* It is common to every language,' says Dr. 
Campbell, i to express the part by the whole 
and the species by the genus f and so con- 
versely, the whole by the part, and the genus 
by the species. < This kind of synechdoche 
is so familiar, and even so strictly proper, as 
hardly to deserve a place among the tropes.' 
The figure of ellipsis too is not only very 
common in all languages, but is sometimes so 



132 SELECTION VIII. 

insidious, sometimes so abrupt, in its occur- 
rence, that, in the one instance, we are not 
aware of it, and in the other, too perplexed 
or confounded to understand it. We would 
paraphrase the text, at large, as seems neces- 
sary, thus 5 

It is not that which entereth into a man 
objectively, from without, that has power 
morally to pollute him, or that can make 
him sin, or attach sin to him ; since it has 
no contact with his heart, the seat of all 
moral quality and character ; but passeth off 
through the intestines in the regular course 
of nature. It is that which cometh out of a 
man, that morally pollutes him; since this 
proceedeth from his heart, expresses the sin 
that he cherishes there, and so defiles and de- 
grades his whole person. Wherefore, your 
ceremonial distinctions of meats, as if it were 
sin to eat one sort, and righteousness to eat 
another, are by this doctrine either abrogated 
or nullified, as arbitrary and fallacious, having 
no foundation in truth ; thus our doctrine 

teaches, xadaqi'Cpv navTa ftqwfuaTct^ purging 

or morally cleansing all meats, and rendering 
these superstitious distinctions void : since 



PURGING ALL MEATS 133 

every creature of God is good, and nothing to 
be refused, if it be received with thanksgiving. 
For it is sanctified by the Word of God, au- 
thoritatively setting it apart for our use ; and 
by prayer for his blessing when we partake 
of it. Wherefore let no man command others 
to abstain from meats, which God hath created 
to be received with thanksgiving of those who 
believe and know the truth. Compare Mat. 
15 : 15-20. with the context, Mark 7 : 18-23. 
1 Tim. 4 : 3-5. and Rom. 14 : 14 where 
Paul says, J know, and am persuaded by the 
Lord Jesus, that there is nothing unclean of 
itself: thus again purging or making clean 
all meats. 

The whole of religion is well divided into 
two grand departments, called objective and 
subjective. The former respects every thing 
in religion viewed mentally in any way as 
an object, whether to be perceived, consider- 
ed, contemplated, obeyed, avoided, approved, 
abhorred, believed, disbelieved, loved, hated, 
followed, or renounced. Every thing, which, 
from without, may affect us objectively, for 
good or for evil, belongs to what we mean 
by the objective class : while the subjective 
12* 



134 SELECTION VIII. 

refers to any or all of our affections, exer- 
cises, actions, or relations, as consequent on 
objective influence. Thus, God in all his 
offices and relations, the Lord Jesus Christ as 
revealed to us in the scriptures, heaven, hell, 
truth, the offer of mercy, every testimony, 
every promise, every threatening, these are 
all religious objects ; while adoration, trust, 
obedience, hope, and all the exercises and 
feelings of piety, and all the Christian graces, 
are subjective, as they occur in the subject, 
and respect our personal acts, thoughts, and 
duties. 

Now the text teaches that nothing objec- 
tive can morally defile us, except as it is ap- 
proved or appropriated by the heart; and 
nothing merely physical or material. Hence 
our Lord Jesus Christ, as man, was conver- 
sant objectively with all the developments of 
sin in this world ; this was a part of his con- 
stant probation, as it is also ours ; but he 
never made them his own by subjective ap- 
probation or allowance, and they could not 
in the least defile him. Neither can it 
morally defile a man to eat any thing ; since 
this action, as such, affects only his animal 



PURGING ALL MEATS 135 

nature, not his heart. And hence intrinsical- 
ly the forbidden fruit was not sin, nor was it 
at all deleterious or hurtful, but rather was it 
delightfully the reverse. All the sin consist- 
ed in disobedience to God. And since, under 
the Christian dispensation especially, all 
meats are lawful to us, to use, not to abuse 
them, Christ has purged or cleansed them 
all, that we may receive them with thankful- 
ness ; and so he has abrogated all the cere- 
monial uncleanness of the Jewish code, whe- 
ther Mosaic or rabbinical. 

The distinction between what is objective 
and what is subjective in the whole of reli- 
gion, is so important to all sound, discrimi- 
nating, and symmetrical views of truth and 
duty, that we commend it, especially to the 
young reader, to be pondered, digested, and 
retained, for future use. Beside, the objective 
should always precede the subjective, and 
control it ; otherwise, instead of order, truth, 
soberness, and wisdom, in our religion, giv- 
ing the precedence to subjective religion, our 
feelings, our imaginations, our wild or sickly 
impressions, nay, our very dreams, and even the 



136 SELECTION VIII. 

deceitful suggestions of the devil, may control 
our piety and nullify the word of God, intro- 
ducing any fanciful or fanatical substitute for 
the truth as it is in Jesus. 



SELECTION IX. 
AGONIZE TO ENTER AT THE STRAIT GATE 

Ltjke, 13: 24. And he said unto them, 
Strive to enter in at the strait gate : for many, 
I say unto you, will seek to enter in, and shall 
not be able. 

Campbell renders it thus : ' Force your en- 
trance through the strait gate ; for many, I 
assure you, will request to be admitted, who 
shall not prevail. 5 

Macknight adopts the common version un- 
altered, and glosses it in his running com- 
mentary with substantial correctness, but 
without seeming to see what the English text 
needs in order to a genuine expression of the 
sense, 

Scott comments with his general force and 
piety, but is defective in the same way. 

So Hammond and others of his age. 

Beza renders the preceptive part after Cal- 



138 SELECTION IX. 

vin and the Vulgate, but substitutes i stude- 
bunt' for c quaerenf in what follows. 

The comments of Calvin on verse 24, seem 
to have led the whole protestant w T orld as to 
its meaning, and not to have well succeeded in 
displaying the perfect sense of the Savior. 
He says, Hoc ideo additum est ne spes inanis 
nos frustretur, acsi nos juvaret comitum mul- 
titudo. nam, ut sibi libenter blanditur caro, 
multi facilem aditum ad vitam sibi promittunt, 
qui sibi interea quidvis indulgent. Ita alii 
alios mutuo decipiunt, ut indormiant pravae 
securitati. Tales delicias ut suis excutiat 
Christus, exclusum iri pronunciat qui jam sibi 
addicunt certam vitae possessionem. 

Admiring the wise and faithful piety that 
ever characterizes this Prince of the Reform- 
ers, we render his w r ords as follows : 

This is added by the Savior, lest any should 
be disappointed by cherishing an empty hope, 
as if they could find some advantage in delu- 
sion merely from the multitude of their com- 
panions. For, since the self-blandishments of 
the flesh are ever ready and spontaneous, 
many promise themselves an easy entrance to 
salvation, requiring no striving or agonizing 



AGONIZE TO ENTER AT THE STRAIT GATE 139 

to secure it ; while in the mean time they in- 
dulge themselves in every gratification they 
desire. In this way they mutually deceive 
each other, that they may perpetuate their 
common sleep of criminal security. Christ 
however would thoroughly arouse his own 
from these perilous delights ; and hence he 
pronounces that they shall be excluded who 
now flatter themselves with the possession of 
life, when they never have truly made its 
acquisition, or practically deprecated a failure, 
or shown any proper efforts of striving to en- 
ter at the narrow gate of regeneration and 
genuine piety. 

Doddridge follows suit in the same strain, 
but with an approximation to the true read- 
ing. His note on the text is excellent. " The 
Prusian version, renders it shall try or attempt 
but I apprehend from the context, that it re- 
fers to importunate entreaties when they were 
actually excluded, rather than to feeble at- 
tempts now ; though it is an awful truth that 
these likewise shall be unsuccessful." Here 
is the germ of the true rendering ! 

Our own honored and eloquent Dr. Griffin 
has given us a noble and excellent sermon on 



14*0 SELECTION IX 

this passage, No. XIII, see his Memoir, from 
the real excellence and power of which it 
grieves a personal friendship even to seem to 
detract a particle. Still, it proceeds on a de- 
monstrable misapprehension of the native 
sense of the text. This is a real infelicity, for 
which all the whole constellation of other ap- 
propriate qualities of a great preacher, how- 
ever well exemplified, cannot perfectly atone. 
It is a fundamental blemish in a sermon, 
however comparatively great and good in all 
other respects. A due reverence for the 
Word of God, especially that part of it which 
we have ourselves on any occasion selected, 
as the basis and the sanction of all our subor- 
dinate ministrations in his name, imperiously 
requires, that, as a wise master-builder and a 
true message-bearer, every minister of his 
word should convey to the people its true 
meaning, its own identical native sense. To 
do this fallaciously, to fail to do it at all, to give 
some other sense of our own, to mistake its 
meaning through inadvertency or indolence, 
or even to accommodate it arbitrarily and 
without due notice of the aberration, and due 
apology for it, is often censurable and inju- 



AGONIZE TO ENTER AT THE STRAIT GATE 14 1 

rious in a very high degree. No man now 
on earth would more cordially respond to 
these observations, than those noble master- 
spirits of piety, now in heaven, to whom they 
at present apply. 

The infelicity that obscures the sense seems 
to have been occasioned by false punctuation 
in the original, and to have been perpetuated 
by the same fault transmitted in the common 
English version, as well as in other versions 
of the living languages of Europe. The 
evils thence resulting are many and great, so 
that the mistake has become a proof-text 
with some hard-pushed disputants, to estab- 
lish their own errors and nullify or obstruct 
the evangelical duties of men.* Of this 

* One good brother, some years ago, when the con- 
troversy raged about the ability or the inability of ac- 
countable man, preached a quietus sermon to the 
whole subject, from this very excellent and often 
abused passage. It was marvellously satisfactory to 
many who walked in the sparks which it had kindled ; 
and perhaps quite as much so to his own ortho- 
dox equanimity. It was strained thus : c Here, my 
brethren, the whole question is decided, and that by 
the highest authority too, the Lord himself. Such a 
preacher of inability was our blessed Lord. They 
seek to enter, says he, and they are not able* What 
13 



142 SELECTION IX. 

more hereafter. The fault is here — a period 
after the word able at the end of the verse, a 
bad division of verses cutting improperly the 
sense, and a miserable detachment of the fol- 
lowing vitally allied verses, as if they were a 
new paragraph and a new argument ; in- 
stead of a continuity of one and the same un- 
broken train of thought, and that among the 
most compact, consecutive, naturally allied, 
awfully picturesque, and solemnly momen- 
tous, that were ever uttered even by the Sa- 
vior himself ! There ought to be either no 

is this but the doctrine of human inability ? It is too 
plain for argument. The Savior has for ever decided 
it. Only believe. 5 

So plain have thousands beside him made it, in their 
own way, and to their own devout approbation. We 
say no more — except that if the public c only believe, 5 
what all the sincere advocates of imbecility and pa- 
ralysis venture to make c too plain for argument, 5 they 
can have their faith fed by wholesale ! Neither 
preacher, nor hearer, in such cases, ever thinks of 
the native sense, never searches for it, never values 
it, and never finds it. In the meantime their blunders, 
dreams, and drivel, are let off, on an edified and con- 
genial auditory, for the very super-quintessence of 
piety, orthodoxy, and wisdom. O what innovators 
and suspectably heretical ones are they who seek for 
the native sense and find it ! What a crime against 
pious stupidity ! 



AGONIZE TO ENTER AT THE STRAIT GATE 143 

point at all, or merely a questionable comma, 
at the end of the verse ; the context ought 
to be viewed as a whole from verse 23 to 30 
inclusive; and the question and answer 
should be heeded in a natural way, entire, as 
if we had been present w r ith the Savior and 
the scene, and as if we had attentively lis- 
tened to it all with a devout pious conviction 
that the Son of God was speaking to us ! 
The importance, the interest and the gran- 
deur of the whole passage, thus properly 
appreciated, are overwhelming, infinite, eter- 
nal ! 

And now, all dross removed, heaven's own pure day, 
Full on the confines of our ether flames. 

The Savior seems at this time to have 
been in hither Galilee, moving slowly, and 
conversing with the people that thronged 
in a crowded attendance around him, as he 
went through the cities and villages, teaching, 
and journeying toward Jerusalem. In that 
slaughter-house of the prophets, he intended 
to appear exactly at the right time, neither 
too late nor too early, to accomplish his de- 
cease as it was written of him, the just for the 



14 1 SELECTION IX. 

unjust, that he might bring us to God. 
What a paragon — like itself alone — of the 
moral sublime ! 

At a suitable moment, a question was pro- 
pounded to him, before all, and which seem- 
ed to interest the multitude. Then said one 
to him, Lord, are the saved few ? 

This was the question, to which the Sa- 
vior returned so appropriate, so instruuctive, 
and so practical an answer. The motives of 
the querist we know not. Possibly he spake 
indeliberately, and because awed by the 
doctrine of Christ, as if suddenly impressed 
with the fact, as a consequence, that few 
only would be saved. Perhaps it was ma- 
lignant, wishing to prejudice the minds of 
the hearers against him as ' damnation 
preacher;' a mean artifice often practised 
against his faithful servants in our times ! It 
might have been captious, as fault-finding 
and designed to bring him into public contro- 
versy ; another disingenuous style of divert- 
ing the truth from its just application to our- 
selves. It was more probably indevout and 
curious, desiring to take the census of the spe- 
cies, and compare the aggregates of lost and 



AGONIZE TO ENTER AT THE STRAIT GATE 145 

saved. Many waste their precious time in 
these impracticable speculations, and injure 
their souls by the evil and dilatory habit of 
religious trifling which it induces. But the 
question was capable of a most practical 
bearing ! If one thinks, that, of living 
adults, it is the rule that the vast majority 
are saved, it may be dangerous error ; it 
may — generate sloth, presumption, and an im- 
pious calculation of chances in our own favor. 
If one thinks that the majority are probably 
lost, at least in previous ages and to the 
present inclusively, it may proportionately 
enliven his diligence to make his own calling 
and election sure* Hence the Savior assures 
him, that, whether the saved at last shall be 
comparatively few or not, the lost are 
" many." And the duty hence arising to our- 
selves is immediately to make sure or effect- 
uate our own entrance to the kingdom, while 
we may, while the door is open ! The an- 
swer of the Savior we present, in our own 
translation, punctuation, and paraphrase, as 
best may represent the native sense of the 
original. 

13* 



146 SELECTION IX. 

And he said unto them, Agonize ye to enter 
by the narrow door while it is open and when 
ye can ; since many, I assure you, shall seek 
to enter when it will be for ever too late ; and 
then they shall be utterly unable, from what in- 
stant the master of the house shall have arisen 
suddenly to judgment and closed the door ) and 
ye shall have begun to stand without in eter- 
nity, the scene having shifted as in the twink- 
ling of an eye at death, and to knock with 
consternation and violence at the door, say- 
ing, c Lord ! Lord ! open to us /' And 
he shall answer and say to you, i I know you 
not whence ye are.' Then shall ye begin to 
say, c We have eaten and drunk in thy pres- 
ence, and thou hast taught in our streets.' 
But he shall say, 1 1 tell you, I know you 
not whence ye are ; depart from me all ye 
workers of iniquity.' In that place there 
shall be weeping and gnashing of teeth, when 
ye shall see Abraham, and Isaac, and Jacob, 
and all the prophets, in the kingdom of God, 
but you yourselves rejected without. And 
they shall come from the east, and from the 
west, and from the north, and from the south, 
and shall sit down in the kingdom of God. 



AGONIZE TO ENTER AT THE STRAIT GATE 147 

And observe ! there are last who shall be first, 
and there are first who shall be last. 

In the common version, unhappily the 
word gate seems not at all identical with door 
in the next verse, if indeed — so disparted by 
false punctuation too — there is expressed any 
relation or allusion at all. But, translating 
from the correct text of Griesbach and oth- 
ers, we reject ^vlrj, gate, and render it dvqa, 
door, in both places. The allusion is mutual, 
and the thing identical. Enter the narrow 
door, while it is open ; for when the master 
of the house shall have arisen, and shut the 
door, then ye shall be utterly unable, from 
that instant of time ; however anxious and 
however importunate may be your efforts of 
desperation, to effect an entrance. 

In this view it is plain that the whole is 
natural, symmetrical, correct. The door is 
open while life lasts ; and this by the sove- 
reign forbearance and clemency of the master 
of the house. When however HE pleases to 
rise up and shut it, suddenly or otherwise, by 
death, the scene is changed instantly, from 
time to eternity ; from an abused probation to 
an undone retribution. The signs and forms 



H8 SELECTION IJt. 

and congruities of one continuity of thought 
and speech, are obvious in the original. Let 
any scholar read it naturally and attentively, 
uncaring of the ill-judged punctuation, and 
he will see the truth and the nature of the 
whole, as a unit of awful and instructive har- 
monies. 

The answer of Christ consists generally of 
two parts ; 

I. The practical and solemn exhortation, 
Jlgonize ye to enter by the narrow door ; and 

II. The considerations and reasons that 
enforce it ; such as — 

1. < Many 5 will perish through neglect of 
it. 

2. They will not neglect it hereafter, when 
they first find themselves undone — and full of 
anguish ! 

3. This change occurs immediately at 
death. 

4. The event of death is determined by the 
sovereign pleasure and providence of the only 
wise God our Savior, w T ho is the master of 
the house of mercy. 

5. The outcry of desperation, when con- 
sciousness first awakes in an undone eternity, 



AGONIZE TO ENTER AT THE STRAIT GATE 149 

will be terrible, importunate, and horribly 
agonizing, as well as intensely great and 
earnest. 

6. It will all be in vain ; they will knock, 
and pray, and exclaim, and beseech, and re- 
peat, and persist in their awful extremity ; 
and Christ will only answer, I know you not ; 
depart from me all ye workers of iniquity. 

7. Consciousnesss, identifying and per- 
sonal, will be perfect in eternity, even more 
luminously than it ever is in time. A man 
will know that it is himself that is there ! 

8. Stoicism and indifference are all mad- 
ness, all affectation ; proceeding from igno- 
rance, insensibility, and unbelief. There 
will be none of it hereafter. Neither men 
nor devils can bear the wrath of the Lamb. 
Let a sinner only perceive a very little of his 
real state, and it will cause his tranquility to 
explode. His heart would fail, his knees to 
smite together like Belshazzar's, and he would 
instantly be seen either agonizing in despair, 
or — agonizing to enter by the narrow door of 
the kingdom. 

In this, the scenes of eternity are purposely 
brought to enforce the grand duty of time. 



150 SELECTION IX. 

And so reluctant and dilatory are men, so in- 
disposed to perform that duty, and so deceitfully 
given to evade and to postpone it, that it re- 
quires such plain dealing hopefully to break the 
enchantment and reduce them to themselves. 
Here the curtain is lifted by the Lord himself; 
and men are permitted to see for themselves, a 
universe of interests and an eternity of mo- 
tives, all bearing, with mighty concentration 
and effect on the immediate and energetic 
performance of the duty — of effecting an en- 
trance, while they can, by the narrow door. 

Let any candid man of equal intelligence 
comprehend the matter, and then say, if there 
is anything to be compared, especially in the 
present instance, with the native sense of the 
oracles of God. The vulgar view, is not the 
native sense ; and because it contains some 
general truth of importance, though it is no pro- 
per interpretation at all, it passes current with 
hundreds even of the ministers of the gospel — 
who will continue to prefer it, too many of 
them, probably, even after they are better 
informed — as if there were no distinction be- 
tween truth in general and truth in special, 
none between truth in some other place and 



AGONIZE TO ENTER AT THE STRAIT GATE 151 

truth in this place, none between sound ab- 
stract theology and a correct investigation of 
the mind of the Spirit in a particular and very 
important passage of his own inspiration. In 
our view, the sense divine is always just infi- 
nitely, just eternally, better than the gloss 
human ; and to evolve that sense, here and 
elsewhere, and let the people see and feel it, 
is better than a thousand sermons of other ex- 
cellence or of grand applause, in which the 
text is not truly, purely, and fully expounded. 
This is the appropriate business of an educat- 
ed and a competent ministry. But O how 
rarely is it done ! how lamentably are other 
things called orthodox and this neglected ! 
How often are flashy and fustian eloquence, 
studied taste, and false ornament, put in the 
place of the genuine truth and soberness of 
the Word of God ! How often are the very 
graces of gesture, voice, and manner, made 
to take the precedency. 

Now this is fulsome ! and offends me more. 
Than in a preacher slovenly attire 
And rustic coarseness would ! 

But when will the ministry and the people 
altogether appreciate the truth of God ? 



152 SELECTION IX. 

when shall the world be flooded with his sal- 
vation ? 

That many commence religion, or seek 
in their own way to obtain it, and fail, be- 
cause they seek it languidly or otherwise, in a 
wrong manner, is a solemn and very impor- 
tant truth ; but it is not the truth or the mean- 
ing here ! Christ is not laying down what 
has been called the ' law of failure 5 in the 
present world, as if seeking were intrinsically 
imcompetent, and as if agonizing were all. 
The seeking, to which HE here refers, is not 
in time, but eternity. It is after death. It is 
desperate and bootless ; though alas ! it is 
perfectly natural in such awful circumstances. 
It is expressed definitely in the future form ; 
not they seek : but they shall seek : not they 
are unable, but they shall not be able, when 
once the door is shut ! 

Seeking is a great duty, which nothing 
ought to be suffered to disparage and to which 
rich promises are made. Seek and ye shall 
find. Every one that seeketh findeth. He 
that cometh to God must believe two things, 
both equally true, equally necessary ; 

That he is ; and 



AGONIZE TO ENTER AT THE STRAIT GATE 153 

That he is the rewarder of them that seek 
him. 

Hence to array the idea of seeking God in 
the present life, as vapid and worthless, 
against that of agonizing as antithetically all, 
is wrong every way ; and surely it fails in 
that for which it has been so often ingenious- 
ly, or at least elaborately, prepared : it does 
not suit the text, it is poor interpretation, it 
leads us away from the sense. 

We have retained the word agonize in our 
version, simply, 1. because it is so often pre- 
ferred ; 2. because it is like the original, from 
which it is a mere transfer ; 3. because it 
expresses energy, vigor, and as it were, ath- 
letic effort, with due determination and action, 
so as to succeed. But agonize in English 
implies pain, if not torture, and is hence ex- 
ceptionable. The original is not so. The 
efforts of a wrestler, not the anguish of a vic- 
tim, is the whole meaning of the order; 
Agonize ye to enter by the narrow door. 

We conclude with some observations on 
the passage, as to its doctrine and scope. 

1. The difficulties, w T hich we find in religion 
are mainly those of our own making ; they re- 

n 



154 SELECTION IX. 

suit from ourselves. They are all relative, not 
intrinsical. The way is plain. The door is 
open. God invites us. The Spirit is ready, 
and saith, come. God is sincere, infinitely 
and eternally sincere, the sincerest being in the 
universe ! But — we are proud, and we dis- 
like to be sane, recovering from that madness 
to the wisdom of humility. We are vain and 
frivolous ; and we must become sober and 
sensible : we must learn and love to think. 
We are indolent and presumptuous ; and God 
requires action, decision, promptitude, in his 
service. We decline for the present ; intend- 
ing on some indefinite ' to-morrow' to consider 
the matter. We have indulged these and 
other bad habits so long, that now we say, how 
can I reform ? Hence the difficulties result 
from ourselves. They are not in the gospel 
of God, but in the voluntary stupidity of man. 
They are all subjective, not objective. God 
is not at all to blame for them ; but man is, 
and except one repents of them he must 
perish. 

2. There are peculiar difficulties in the first 
stages of piety, in the commencement of reli- 
gion. Agonize ye to enter by the 7iarrow 



AGONIZE TO ENTER AT THE STRAIT GATE 155 

door. Some of the sternest difficulties, rela- 
tively such, that ever lie in the way of the 
Christian pilgrim, lie at the threshold and 
are found at starting. How can he give up 
the world as his chief good — when he knows, 
that, as such, it is no good at all, but only 
delusion, perfidy, destruction ! How can he 
choose God in Christ Jesus as his better part, 
his eternal portion, when he is guilty in the 
sight of God, and the very thought of God is 
solemnly revolting or cordially ungrateful to 
him ! God indeed is excellent, glorious, all- 
perfect, infinitely blessed ; and all this, both 
intrinsically and relatively, in himself and to 
us. But he has not been used to think thus 
of God. His habits are his enemies ; and 
they are so set, and fixed, and formidable, 
within him, that how to perform that which 
is good, he finds not. Here is conflict. Be- 
side, he sees many lions in the way. How 
will he appear, after conversion, to his former 
companions in madness ? What will they 
think of him 1 What will they all say ? 
How can he endure their looks, their sneers, 
their calumnies 1 And how does he know 
that religion is a practicable thing for him, or 



156 SELECTION IX. 

that he shall hold on and hold out, should he 
begin ? Were it not better never to be- 
gin, than fail and be eventually unable to 
finish, so great an enterprise ? How hard is 
it to give up all for Christ, or be forever un- 
worthy of him ! 

Such or similar are some of the many be- 
setments and hindrances which molest a poor 
sinner at starting, or at the thought of be- 
coming a Christian. He counts the cost im- 
perfectly, and all on one side. He is not so 
impartial and large-minded, as to weight the 
subject, calmly and wisely, in the scales of 
truth. ' How much will it cost me to be a 
Christian,' he inquires. And if he urges the 
question directly and to some extent he often 
hesitates the more, as if he cannot afford it ! 
But how seldom does he calculate the infi- 
nitely greater cost of not becoming a Chris- 
tian ! the infinite comparative cheapness of 
genuine piety ! When he sees this distinct- 
ly, acquiesces in its truth, and approves it, all 
the levities of the other side appear to him, as 
they are, justly contemptible. He despises 
them, and despises himself for the unmanly 
cowardice that could entertain them for a 



AGONIZE TO EISTER AT THE STRAIT GATE 157 

moment ! He makes the necessary decisions, 
efforts, sacrifices ! He loses nothing, but is 
an infinite gainer. He enters by the narrow 
door, and succeeds in his agonizing of initia- 
tion. He is the freeman of Jesus Christ. He 
is a new creature. For the first time in his 
life, the internal war of elements subsides. 
His heart and his conscience move together 
with his understanding, and all in the ways 
and channels of the truth. Thus it is that 
the Spirit of God leads him, illumines him, 
elevates, refines, and enfranchises him. He 
is justified freely by his grace through the re- 
deraption that is in Christ Jesus. The pro- 
cess of sanctification is genuinely begun ; he 
has experienced regeneration by the Spirit of 
God; and his difficulties vanish. Piety is 
pleasure, duty is delight, obedience is prefer- 
ence, service is freedom, self-denial is profit ; 
and godliness is great gain. The lions he 
imagined in the way, are found to have 
been all in his own morbid imagination. As 
soon as he walks up to them, they are not 
there. Phantoms have no substance. Reali- 
ties now affect him. He sees them, and feels 
them, by faith in what his Savior tells him. 
14* 



158 SELECTION IX. 

He is made wise unto salvation through faith 
which is in Christ Jesus. He is a conqueror, 
conquest is now his business, his occupation. 
He has passed the Rubicon, the perilous cri- 
sis, the awful threshold, the narrow door. 
He may find difficulties afterward. But he 
expects them, he can vanquish them; they are 
not so terrifying, so tremendous, as those he 
found at the entrance. He has learned with 
Paul to say J can do all things, through Jesus 
Christ who strengthened me. 

3. The two kinds of inability have here 
their illustration. Now men cannot enter, 
because the choose to omit it. The door is 
open by order of the master of the house. 
It is not he that prevents them. On the con- 
trary, he opens the door, at great expense of 
benevolence, and at the cost of the blood of 
his own life ; and he beseeches, as well as 
invites them, to enter. And they will not 
come to him that they might have life. This 
will not is their inability. It makes their 
cannot. Why do they not enter ? Who 
hinders them ? They hinder themselves. 
What a mountain interposed is that will ! 
They make their own inability — which is 



AGONIZE TO ENTER AT THE STKAIT GATE 159 

nothing but voluntary disinclination. It is 
this obstacle that the Spirit of God removes 
in regeneration ; which is a moral change, as 
in it the temper and prevailing preference of 
the man are changed. Now he desires God, 
his truth, his ways ; and now he subordinates 
the world to his supreme good. 

But hereafter we see plainly there will be 
an inability of another sort. Many shall 
seek and shall not be able ? Why ? An- 
swer — Because the door is shut by Omnipo- 
tence, and men are not able to open it. Had 
they the will never so much, it would not be 
the power. They are eternally unable to 
enter; a proper, perfect inability. 

These two kinds are marvellously different 
in nature ; and they are grand realities to be 
contemplated in the objective of all piety. 
We must make a distinction where God has 
made a difference ; or, never see things as 
they are to be seen. The distinction applies 
to all voluntary beings. It is simple, real, 
eternal. It wonderfully illumines the moral 
system of God. It is just as valid as that 
identical distinction, made commonly by di- 
vines, between the natural and the moral per- 
fections of God ; or, those which define him 



160 SELECTION JX. 

great and those which define him good. 
It is a distinction which all men believe; 
acting on it, judging by it, understanding it, 
every where — till it is brought to elucidate 
the moral empire of God, to prove the ac- 
countableness of man, and to fix the inexcusa- 
bleness of the ungodly ! Then they cannot un- 
derstand it. They doubt its truth, or its rele- 
vancy, or its use. They are unable to under- 
stand it. They have lost all their ability to see 
their own blame-worthiness! How can a man 
own his sin, when he is proud ? How attend to 
religion, when he prefers worldly pleasure ? 
4. We see that now men are able to 
enter by the narrow door. If it be asked, 
In what sense ? we reply, in common sense, 
and proper sense, they are able : because 
they have all the requisite faculties, they 
have all the facilities and means, and they 
have the opportunity, as well as the in- 
vitation and the command of God, to enter 
while there's room and while the door is open. 
They are then properly able, whether dispos- 
ed and willing or not ; and whether finally 
saved or lost, they are now able. They are 
able in that very sense in which they shall 
not be able token once the master of the house 



AGONIZE TO ENTER AT THE STRAIT GATE 161 

hath risen up and hath shut to the door. The 
Spirit gives no new faculties in regeneration. 
He influences men to enter by the narrow door, 
by means of their own agency, subsidized to 
Christ, and now applied in the way of duty, 
as it was before perverted in the way of sin. 
He influences them through the truth, by ap- 
propriate means, and in accordance with the 
laws of mind. Their accountability is not at 
all violated. It is rather exercised, display- 
ed, and glorified, in it all. 

5. They will be wholly and eternally un- 
able in the world to come, as they are not un- 
able here. This the Savior shows us, most gra- 
phically in his whole answer. The inability 
that can and will not, as distinguished from 
that which will and cannot, is here exceeding- 
ly intelligible. They are called, the one im- 
proper and the other proper ; or, the moral 
and the natural ; or, the ethical and the phy- 
sical ; or that which exists independently of 
our will and in defiance of our powers, and 
that which consists with our powers and 
is constituted wholly by our will or our own 
voluntary inclination ; or, that in which we 
are passive, it being made for us by a power 
extraneous and superior, and that in which 



162 SELECTION IX. 

we are active, it being made, accountably, 
by ourselves, in the voluntary exercise of our 
own powers. It is a pity that Christians, and 
some divines even, cannot discern the difference 
on which this distinction rests ! Have they 
no capacity, of seeing truth, of following evi- 
dence, of understanding things ? or is it be- 
cause they make their own inability by their 
obstinacy, their w T ill ? If so, we must testify 
the truth, whether they hear or whether they 
forbear I We blest God, for ourselves, that, 
with no miraculous dotation, we can discern 
the difference, and see the basis on which the 
distinction rests ! And who could not see it, 
that is neither an idiot, nor insane, nor asleep, 
nor intoxicated, nor a hater of the light ! 

6. How great is the madness, that men in 
their senses, capable of reflection, and ration- 
ally convinced of the truth, with an open 
door of salvation before them, which no man 
can shut, should dally, hesitate, and trifle, 
with all their eternal interests, with all the 
moral glory of the slighted God, and actually 
perish forever — just because they make no 
proper effort to be saved ! 

7. How will they be suddenly and forever 
confounded when once the master of the house 



AGONIZE TO ENTER AT THE STRAIT GATE 163 

has risen up and shut to the door at death, 
and they begin to find themselves in eter- 
nity lost ! 

8. How ought that audacious lie, Univer- 
salism, to be ashamed and abolished forever. 
Here the Savior and the Judge and the Pro- 
phet of the church, lifts the curtain, shows us 
a scene in the other world, and there are 
many seeking in vain to enter when it is for- 
ever too late ! If a man chooses to disbe- 
lieve all this divine testimony, and all that in 
other places throughout the Holy Scriptures, 
he may wait — if he dares, for what shall 
convince him of the fire, at last — he may 
wait for personal experience ! whose judg- 
ment now of a long time lingereth not and 
their damnation slumbereth not. 

9. How is Unitarianism in like manner 
exploded ! Behold the Son of God opening 
and shutting at his pleasure the door of hope ! 
answering, as the Most Holy Judge Eternal, 
the unavailing outcries of the reprobate ! 
Compare Mat. 7:23. Jlndthen will I prof ess 
unto them, I never knew you. Depart from 
me, ye that work iniquity. And is he a mere 
man, or a mere creature of any larger dimen- 
sions ? Let 6 the sons of reason' affirm the 



161- SELECTION TX. 

delusion, if they choose. They will cease 
that madness in eternity, if not in time. 

10. Though the difficulties of religion, es- 
pecially in its initial stages, are relative and 
not intrinsic, are all of our own making, and 
not organized or created by the nature of the 
gospel, yet are they real difficulties, which it 
requires effort, and something like agony, to 
overcome. Men are not to float or drift into 
heaven, like trees by a freshet borne into a city 
that stands on the margin of a river. The 
church is not like a steamer, into which if 
one gets, he may expect safely to sail into 
port, asleep or awake, drunk or sober, active 
or indolent. Nor is there any tide of destiny 
or decrees inconsistent with the mandates 
and the duties here prescribed. JVo lie is of 
the truth ; and the ways of God are all con- 
sistent, harmonious, true, from everlasting 
ages. 

We are not of them who reduce or dilute 
the truths of God ; much as we desire to see 
the truth represented as it is, with the purity 
of an apostle, the simplicity of a master, and 
the suitableness of costume and illustration, 
which the age and the intelligent reading 
public require. We have no communion 



AGONIZE TO ENTER AT THE STRAIT GATE 165 

with those, as such, who in any way endea- 
vor plausibly to misrepresent the practical 
nature of piety ; especially with those who 
depicture the way of life to be not narrow 
but broad, reversing the figures and the facts of 
our Savior's statements. This may be done 
by views of the surface, partial and peurile ; by 
doctrine, specious and unfounded ; by the pa- 
rade of outward and unintelligent devotion ; 
by the taking fallacies of antinomianism ; by 
formality, ritualism, self-righteousness, Armi- 
nianism, or any other flesh-pleasing invention. 
Some preachers show such a wonderful faci- 
lity of entrance, as to exclude all serious ef- 
fort, to say nothing of wrestling in prayer 
or agonizing. They seem to imply that very 
worldlings might naturally dance or stagger 
into the kingdom under their administrations, 
as they drift with the multitude of fashion, or 
run with their frivolous comrades of mirth, in 
the course of this world ; making in effect 
nothing of regeneration, nothing of substan- 
tial piety, nothing of the true sayings of 
God ; but making all of their own paltry 
party and their own idolized canonical forms. 
There is a leaven of this, increasingly opera- 
tive in our general community of late. But 
15 



166 SELECTION IX. 

it must be boldly resisted by the friends of 
God. It is popery — none the safer, or the 
less noxious, for wearing the mask of protes- 
tantism. It operates as poison to the soul, 
deluding men. It vitiates fundamentally the 
revealed doctrine of regeneration — as if this 
could be without a change of heart ! And it 
magnifies the popish and thrice stupid error of 
' the church ;' as it were their sole object to 
restore to us the dark ages, in which that 
false conception, down to the present day, 
has had an immense influence in making the 
darkness that may yet be seen and felt. It 
consists of three parts — every one of them 
pestiferous and false ; 1. That there is no dif- 
ference, or none of importance, between the 
church visible and the church invisible ; the 
distinction being useless or illusory. 2. That 
the proper attributes of the invisible are to be 
predicated of the visible church ; as that out 
of it there is no salvation, its unity, its per- 
petuity, God's gracious presence there, his 
mercy in it, and with it, forever. 3. That 
the visible church is identified with their own 
denomination, which is exclusively c the 
church ;' as all other denominations — they 
never say ' churches' in this relation — are 



AGONIZE TO ENTER AT THE STRAIT GATE 167 

outcast from c the church/ and are abandoned 
to ' the uncovenanted mercies' of God. This 
tri-form monster is wholly anti-scriptural ; 
and we believe, in its origin and its deserts, 
infernal ! We think it wholly superfluous 
here to advance one proof, since the state- 
ment proves itself. On any proper occasion, 
we are semper paratus, with the word of 
God, against this deleterious falsehood. We 
know mainly of no greater or more important 
distinction than that between the church visi- 
ble and the church invisible. Grace be with all 
them that love our Lord Jesus Christ in sinceri- 
ty; that is, with all the invisible church ! The 
error must be resisted even unto blood ; we 
would rather die than patronize it. But it is 
more to our purpose here to say that it makes 
men so at ease in Zion, that many of them have 
no agony in entering or occupying, the visible 
church ; since they never care to enter the 
terra incognita of the church invisible. Many 
a foolish virgin has a lamp, and that is all ! 

Hence we see the deep folly and blindness 
of those preachers and those sects, who are 
wont so to smooth the way in their repre- 
sentations as to imply, that, with them, and 
under the ' authority 5 of their faction of ' the 



168 SELECTION IX. 

church,' it is all easy and clear, all stereo- 
typed in order, all rail-road facilities and 
transportation — only join them ! But it is 
one thing to win a poor fool of a partisan, 
and quite another in God's way to make a 
Christian. Men have many ways of reli- 
gionizing, and a grand desideratum it is with 
honorable millions, to find ' a religion fit for 
gentlemen,' or a way i by authority,' that is 
a great deal easier and better than the prime- 
val old way of God. Baptism is very equivo- 
cal — regeneration ! How to be saved and 
yet never obey the gospel ; how reasonably 
and credibly, 

t To reconcile one's sins with saving grace ;' 
this is the inexorable difficulty. 

11. The popular idea that ' while there is 
life there is hope,' seems in an important 
sense to be sustained by the whole moral 
drift of our Savior's answer. Its symmetrical 
and analogical sense is that death superven- 
ing shuts the door, and excludes hope, in the 
case of the reprobate ; consequently, there 
is hope previously, because the door is open. 
To be sure, this is objective hope ; and there 
is never humanly any subjective hope for a 
sinner, until it is made by regeneration ; 



AGONIZE TO ENTER AT THE STRAIT GATE 169 

which is Christ in you the hope of glory. 
But in the sense and the proportions of the 
passage, it appears clear that Watts is right 
when he says ; 

And while the lamp holds out to burn 
The vilest sinner may return. 

Certainly, he may. The door is open ; and 
he is obligated to count the long-suffering of 
God to be salvation ; and so to enter and be 
saved, as God still invites and commands 
him. If he is prevented, it is not God that 
prevents him. If straitened, he is not strait- 
ened in us, but in his own bowels. If blinded, it 
is his own voluntarily indulged pride, and 
self-righteousness, and ungodly habits, by 
which the things that belong to his peace are 
hidden from his eyes. The way is plain be- 
fore him ; the door is open ; he is on proba- 
tionary ground ! The Spirit and the Bride say, 
Come ; the blood of Christ has lost none of 
its efficacy ; the mercy of God is infinitely 
rich ; the thing is not impossible, neither in 
itself, nor to the resources of Omnipotence ; 
his duty is unchangeable ; and he is in no 
sense unable, as he will be unable, when 
once the master of the house has risen up and 
hath shut to the door. 
15* 



170 LECTION IX. 

Even ' the unpardonable sin,' as it is hu- 
manly and technically called, is not so called 
in the Word of God. It is there described 
historically alone ; as that which, as a mat- 
ter of fact, hath never forgiveness. It may be 
pardonable, and yet never pardoned. It may 
be related one way to the sufficiency of es- 
sential or provisional mercy, and quite another 
way to the eventuation of things. What- 
ever w T e may say or think about the most 
hardened reprobate on earth, we must own, 
that, when the tables are turned against him 
in eternity, he is then consummately undone, 
unable, lost, as he never was before, in this 
world ; where, as a prisoner of hope, salvation 
was practicable to him, as it never will be 
again, and as it never was to a prisoner of 
despair. We only add, that, it is very difi- 
cult and even dangerous for us to determine, 
in any given case, that the party is utterly 
abandoned of his God and that he will never 
be converted. We ought to i hope on and 
hope ever, 5 while we can ; to err rather on 
the side of hope, than on that of despair ; and 
to remember that thousands have been utterly 
^iven up of man, who were not abandoned of 



AGONIZE TO ENTER AT THE STRAIT GATE 171 

God, as their subsequent salvation will eter- 
nally demonstrate to the glory of God. 

12. The popular idea of death-bed terrors, so 
awful, so awakening, and so propitious to a des- 
perate conversion in the final hour, is wholly 
excluded and condemned by the passage be- 
fore us ; as it is condemned by the whole 
tenor of Scripture and the whole testimony 
of experience. Scan the passage. Measure 
its architecture. Weigh its proportions, rela- 
tions, and principles. The terror comes only 
in eternity, only when the door is shut, only 
when they stand without and exclaim in the 
anguish of despair. Men ordinarily die just 
as they live ; and they first live in the Lord, 
if they die in the Lord and are blessed. Ordi- 
narily men, who live fools, die fools, in spite 
of Dr. Young's prophecy and poetry. 

Ye deaf to truth ! peruse this parson'd page 
And trust for once a prophet and a priest — 
' Men may live fools but fools they cannot die.' 

The thief on the cross is a prodigy, a rare ex- 
ception ; in circumstances that will never be 
repeated — as the Savior dies no more. ' There 
is one such instance, on record, that none 
might despair \ and but one, that none might 
presume.' 



172 SELECTION IX. 

Besides, terror and consternation are not 
propitious to piety, if they come. Convul- 
sion, paroxysm, phrensy, are opposed to sober 
piety, and not at all desirable. Still, if it 
were not so, they are remedies that ordinarily 
are not found. The wicked die the death of 
fools. There are no bands in their death, but 
their strength is firm. This means not their 
physical ' strength' ; for that declines. Oth- 
erwise, they would never die at all. It means 
therefore, the moral strength of their delu- 
sion, their blindness, their false hope, their 
ominous serenity, and their state as incorrigi- 
ble, as abandoned, and as soon to be chang- 
ed, to their eternal confusion. 

13. One final thought is plain — Every man 
must personally agonize to enter the kingdom 
of mercy ; that is, he must do it absolutely, 
he shall do it infallibly, the necessity to do it 
is universal and inexorable. The only ques- 
tion is — where, when, and with what hope, 
will he do it ? He must agonize in time or 
in eternity ; w T ith effort and decision, or with 
phrensy and desperation ; with ' high endea- 
vor and with glad success,' or with the out- 
cry of the lost and the horrible energy and 
wailing of the finally reprobate. He must 



AGONIZE TO ENTER AT THE STRAIT GATE 173 

agonize comparatively without pain or ab- 
solutely with pain ; comfortably with hope 
or miserably without hope ! Yea, and he 
must seek with prayer, for an entrance — 
either where prayer can be heard or where it 
cannot be heard ; where Jesus can answer in 
mercy or where he must answer in judgment ; 
where he says, / will receive you, or where 
he says, / never knew you ; depart from me, 
all ye workers of iniquity. Every man seeks 
an entrance, either here while the door is 
open, or hereafter, when it is shut ! And 
how affecting to compare the earnestness of 
the efforts and the entreaties of despair, with 
the listlessness and the negligence of any 
exertions ordinarily made — it seems — in this 
world of hope ! who will yet discredit 
the truth as it is in Jesus, and hazard all on 
the forlorn hope of some indefinable rescue at 
last, while he neglects so great salvation now ? 
Eternity, salvation, perdition, the word of 
God, these are too much for us to trifle with 
them. Said one arrested worldling to an- 
other, ' If there is any truth in religion, this 
is a desperate game at which you and I are 
playing !' The Spirit of the living God had 
made that new impression in his soul ; and 



174 SELECTION IX. 

its expression, in such terms of forcible truth, 
was the natural consequence. 

Reader, take your election — Will you seek 
now or hereafter 1 Will you make the ago- 
ny of effort when it can avail you, or the 
agony of anguish when it will be worse than 
vain ? Will you pray now, when the Sa- 
vior can hear you, or hereafter when he will 
be inexorable ? Which will you prefer, pros- 
perity or defeat, in so great a concern ? 
Seek, pray, agonize, you must. the dif- 
ference, of attempting it in a world of mercy 
or in a world of wrath ! Here is hope, en- 
couragement, probation ; there is despair, 
madness, retribution ! Which alternative 
shall be yours ? That of the saved or the 
lost? Under God, it depends on yourself to 
decide. He appeals to you, and waits for 
you, to decide. He is patient indeed ; but 
there is no neutrality no indecision with him. 
He is urging you, persuading you, command- 
ing you, to do what is now practicable. It 
is not in your ruin that he takes any pleasure 
at all. So he hath sworn, as well as spoken, 
and by his actions shown. He is infinitely 
benevolent, and eternally sincere. True, he 
can make you useful to the universe in your 



A WORD TO SABBATH SCHOOL TEACHERS 175 

destruction ; and he will, he must, do it, if 
you turn not to him. But he infinitely prefers 
your salvation. His philanthropy is infinite 
and eternal. It would gratify his perfect na- 
ture, and glorify his boundless benevolence, 
to save you. Not all the angels in heaven 
would rejoice at your conversion one mil- 
lionth part as much as God. But he can 
do no contradiction, no absurdity, no mo- 
ral wrong, no falsification of his own truth. 
He cannot ruin the universe to save you, 
He cannot save you in sin, or without your 
own consent, your own exercised repentance, 
your own direct efforts to enter, while you 
may, the strait gate of his kingdom. Will 
you be his friend, or his enemy, forever ? Ms 
though God did beseech you by us, we pray you 
in Christ's stead, be ye reconciled to God. 



A WORD TO SABBATH SCHOOL TEACHERS 

Before the volume closes, we would sub- 
join a few remarks on the utility of especial 
care, and prayer, and system, in reading the 
Bible. The loose and desultory way is known, 
not by its fruits, but by its fruitlessness, to be 



176 A WORD TO 

condemned as unworthy of regard. And what 
we here append is designed peculiarly for 
teachers in Sabbath Schools. 

These have an office of uncomputed in- 
fluence and efficiency in the formation of reli- 
gious character. Millions are moulded by 
them before they are mature, before they can 
judge for themselves, and before they come 
under the higher, and the more distant, in- 
structions of the Christian pastor. How im- 
portant that the teachers should be taught ! 
that those who impart instruction and origi- 
nate impressions in religion, should be them- 
selves sound in the faith, replete with wisdom, 
habituated to the rules of discipline, and 
always able to render a reason, and that a 
good one, for all that they inculcate, as moni- 
tors and ushers in the school of Christ ! The 
church has too often derived detriment here, 
where she looked only for advantage. Teach- 
ers have sometimes mistaken grossly the truth, 
inculcated their ow T n errors and ignorances 
instead of it, and so communicated mischief, 
in place of benefit, to the confiding youth- 
ful circle that waited around such an unwor- 
thy centre. We will not accuse one of them 
in general, though such unworthy instances 



SABBATH SCHOOL TEACHERS 177 

have sometimes occurred, of a design to use 
their station and their office to teach strange 
doctrine or propagate sentiments condemned 
by the church to which they belong — though 
this, we repeat it, has been done, with clan- 
destine and infamous address, in some certain 
cases ! We suppose them all honest. We 
thank them for their excellent auxiliary ser- 
vices. We appreciate their self-denial. We 
know that some of the most useful, and the 
most assiduous, and the most deserving, of 
them, are sometimes utterly discredited, utter- 
ly unthanked, as well as unrewarded, for their 
faithfulness and their toil. We wish them at 
least to secure a full reward in heaven ; in or- 
der to this we take the liberty to remind them 
of a few things. Will they receive the free- 
dom from a friend ? 

1. They ought religiously to ponder and ap- 
preciate the nature and the responsibleness of 
their charge. Within a sphere of limited di- 
mensions they are pastors, that is, teachers of 
the truth. They are forming the minds of 
young immortals. Each one of them has a 
congregation of dependent souls. What a 
solemn and weighty business do they trans- 
act! How eternal its consequences, how 
16 



178 A WORD TO 

divinely excellent its aims, and properly how 
rich and how eternal are its rewards ! 

2. They ought to prepare for their work, 
and that habitually, and conscientiously, and 
always, before attempting its performance. 
They ought to study the lesson themselves — 
not merely read, but study it ! This they 
might do with pleasure and profit to them- 
selves, infinitely outweighing all the care, and 
the cost, and the self-denial, required. It 
would soon become easy, natural, interesting, 
by habituation. They would feed themselves 
as well as others. They would grow in all 
divine excellences. It would improve and 
enrich their minds. They would get more 
than they give, and retain more than they 
dispense, continually improving. And thus 
with more confidence and propriety could they 
pray for the divine blessing on all that they 
teach and on all that they do. 

3. As one important part of preparation w r e 
say Keep a good and durable Bible common- 
place book, and enter in it any select passage 
of scripture, with your own sober and maturest 
thoughts, making and recording there all those 
reflections on its meaning, its use, its connec- 
tion, its grammar, its implication, and its his- 



SABBATH SCHOOL TEACHERS 179 

tory, which may incidentally and at the time 
occur to you — dating every entry, and paging 
every leaf, for better re-perusal and distinc- 
tion and reference. Suppose you insert one 
text only a week, w T hich you have yourself 
found and analyzed, or which some good 
preacher has well explained, or which some 
of your class have mistaken or misquoted, or 
which you especially wish to remember, or 
which some author has brought to your view. 
Put down your best impressions at the time — - 
or they may leave you forever. This book 
would soon become a precious treasure to you. 
In this way then you have fifty-two select 
passages in a year — with a commentary. 
You will have more next year. Your mind 
is benefited. You will teach better in the 
school, and learn better in the church, and 
pray better in the closet. The mental disci- 
pline of such a process will be practically 
great. For, if conversation makes a ready 
man, and thinking a profound one, if reading 
makes a full man, prayer a devout man, and 
writing a correct one, as Lord Bacon some- 
where saith, you could blend all these as a 
Sabbath School teacher, in the way we here 
commend. Your pastors will love to aid you 



180 A WORD TO SABBATH SCHOOL TEACHERS 

occasionally as you may need it; and, remem- 
bering without ceasing your work of faith, and 
labor of love, and patience of hope in our Lord 
Jesus Christ, in the sight of God even our 
Father, they will greet and love you as fel- 
low-helpers in the work of the gospel and 
powerful auxiliaries to their own ministry. 

Nor should you be discouraged at first from 
a sense of your own inaptitude. All begin- 
nings, said the late Doctor Mason, are awk- 
ward. Your efforts would grow more and 
more easy. You would get tact and facility 
by practice and perseverance. Soon your 
proficiency would be felt and seen. One 
such experimental, disciplined, intelligent 
teacher, is worth more than a host of drivelers 
and spiritual pedants — however honest, how- 
ever sincere. The benefits would be count- 
less and incalculable. We should all become 
biblical Christians. Our youth would mature 
under a forming influence of the best descrip- 
tion. They would be wise in the things of 
God ; and neither infidelity, nor popery, nor 
puseyism, nor the mountebank schemers of the 
end of the world — particularly April 1, 1843 
— could shake their constancy, or mar their 
peace, or impede their usefulness or their sal- 
vation. 



n 1 Thomson Park Orive 



